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Linux Software

Race to Linux Project Announced 100

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the hurry-up-and-blur-the-lines-so-we-can-have-a-choice dept.
An anonymous reader writes "According to Internetnews.com The Race to Linux project was announced Wednesday at the recent Microsoft Professional Developers Conference. The challenge: port an existing ASP.NET application to Linux using any cross-platform tool of choice, including Mono, Grasshopper and PHP. (Mainsoft offers tools that let Visual Studio users build applications that run natively in the Unix, J2EE and Linux environments.) Yaacov Cohen, CEO of Mainsoft stated: 'Linux is too big and ubiquitous to ignore.'"
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Race to Linux Project Announced More

Race to Linux Project Announced

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  • Is this Microsoft's plan? I'm so sick of stuff like this...

  • I thought Vista (Score:5, Funny)

    by hungrygrue ( 872970 ) on Saturday September 17, 2005 @06:09PM (#13587062) Homepage
    Was Microsoft's "Race to Linux" project?

  • Of Course (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Luke Psywalker ( 869266 )
    .....but thats not what this article is about.
  • Yaacov Cohen, CEO of Mainsoft stated: 'Linux is too big and ubiquitous to ignore.
    Mr. Cohen spelled Mirco wrong.

  • First thoughts (Score:5, Funny)

    by LiquidCoooled ( 634315 ) on Saturday September 17, 2005 @06:20PM (#13587113) Homepage Journal
    I first thought of porting "Hello World!" to linux.

    Then I realised that the .net version is 17mb compressed and covers numerous files and resource images.
    • Close, it's 3,072 bytes.

      Your point is well taken, though. I think...

      • 3072 bytes? Well I guess that's good old M$ bloat in action! Why on Linux such a hello world app only takes up 3065 bytes, proving just how bloated, evil, slow blah blah M$ is!

        Stop destroying the world with bloated 3072 byte hello world apps!

        (Hey, biased religious insanity is the correct way to counter a factual statement disproving an incorrect sterotype regarding Windows, right?)
        • 3072 bytes? Well I guess that's good old M$ bloat in action! Why on Linux such a hello world app only takes up 3065 bytes, proving just how bloated, evil, slow blah blah M$ is!

          Stop destroying the world with bloated 3072 byte hello world apps!

          $ cat src/c/hello.c
          #include
          #include
          int main() { printf("Hello, World!\n"); }

          $ gcc -O3 -o hello src/c/hello.c

          $ dir hello
          -rwxr-xr-x 1 me me 6966 2005-09-17 21:05 hello

          $ strip hello

          $ dir hello
          -rwxr-xr-x 1 me me 3176 2005-09-17 21:05 hello

          me@haggis:~$ gcc --version
          gcc (

          • Try without -O3, optimizing the code makes it faster, but it takes up more disk space as a result.
            • But the last thing you want is a slow hello world!
            • Try without -O3, optimizing the code makes it faster, but it takes up more disk space as a result.

              Not in this tiny trival case.

              A stripped "regular" hw is 3192 bytes, 1 quadword longer than the -O3 binary.

              Since they both fit on a disk page, it doesn't really matter anyway...
              • A stripped "regular" hw is 3192 bytes, 1 quadword longer than the -O3 binary.

                -O3 has permission to make the file much larger in order to run quicker (e.g. extreme loop unrolling and inlining, etc.). -O2 and -Os, for example, don't.

                But frankly 3K is reasonable for the CRT start-up, etc., anyway.
        • actually, this bit of code: #include int main(int argc, char** argv) { printf("hello world!\n"); return 0; } just compiled to 12K with GCC under linux. go figure... those 3K hello worlds really are evil!
        • WHOOSH!
          actually, being an interpreted executable, it seems rather large.
        • Hello World! on linux in 29 bytes
          #!/bin/sh
          echo "Hello World!"
      • Now that's slashdot for you ;) someone posts a claim that hello world is 18 MB compressed in ASP.NET, and someone finds out it's 3072 bytes. complete with shebang it's 28 bytes for my program 'hw' which consists of "#!/bin/sh
        echo hello world!"
        but I hear what he's saying about 'compression bloat' with tar bz2 compression hw becomes 154 bytes
    • That's a lot of millibytes!
    • 20kb for the version with a form with a button that pops up a Hello World Messagebox.

      16kb for the Console version that just spits out "Hello World".

  • Forget Software (Score:1, Offtopic)

    by Walzmyn ( 913748 )
    I want to see my mom and my wife ported to Linux so I can stop dual booting my machine and only have to keep up the non-profit tech support for one OS.
    • I want to see my mom and my wife ported to Linux so I can stop dual booting my machine and only have to keep up the non-profit tech support for one OS.

      I used to have that problem. Then I said to myself, "Slowly quit being so good at solving Microsoft problems and keep solving Linux problems!" The problem went away a few months later!

      • I used to have that problem. Then I said to myself, "Slowly quit being so good at solving Microsoft problems and keep solving Linux problems!" The problem went away a few months later!

        It was more instant for me. I went from "I'll have a look at that if you want", to "Sorry, I'm a mac|unix guy. I don't know anything about Windows". Problem solved, instantly.

  • Makes sense (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward

    if Microsoft really is a software company, they should get their products working on everything, who cares about the OS the customer chooses , Microsoft should support it regardless,
    of course if they are *not* a software company then being a 1 trick pony is what we would expect

    • I agree. Microsoft should port Office 2000 to my Commodore 64. That'll seperate the men from the boys!

    • Re:Makes sense (Score:4, Insightful)

      by RAMMS+EIN ( 578166 ) on Saturday September 17, 2005 @07:00PM (#13587268) Homepage Journal
      ``if Microsoft really is a software company, they should get their products working on everything, who cares about the OS the customer chooses''

      Well, Microsoft does, and they very well should. If people can run MS Office, Exchange, etc. on better systems than Windows without jumping through hoops, businesses and schools may well decide they don't need Windows anymore. That would kill one of Microsoft's two cash cows. Since Office - the other cash cow - is already starting to lose popularity, that would be a very bad thing.

      I seriously think that Microsoft is currently at or over their peak. Their flagship called Windows has made it to the ocean called 'Internet', but is found not to be seaworthy. Malware is penetrating it at an alarming rate, and it's only a matter of time before it will sink. It remains to be seen if their next OS will be any better. At the same time, their Office software has about reached the point where no new features can be important enough to attract many new customers, and since they have pretty much the whole market, they can only go down from here.

      In both markets, they are receiving competition from opponents that they can't kill. Open source projects just won't die while there are still people using them. Right now, open source is still all potential and no real growth in the market that Microsoft is in. However, with cross-platform products like Firefox and OpenOffice.org slowly creeping in, it is only a matter of time until the benefits of jumping ship from Windows to Linux overcome the resistance, and then the self-sustaining system of platform lock-in will come crashing down.

      Whether or not Microsoft actually loses most of their market share, the truth is that they will be forced to innovate and forced to compete, both of which eat into their profits. The days of them being a virtual monopoly are numbered.
      • They certainly are not over with record profits. And at their peak, doubt it. Whether or not Vista is a good product (i think it will be), it will be hyped to high hell and it will push their profits even higher. If their peak is going to fall, it wont be in the next year or two.
    • if Microsoft really is a software company, they should get their products working on everything, who cares about the OS the customer chooses , Microsoft should support it regardless,

      Of course, a software company being a type of business, Microsoft should port products to platforms if it will actually get a return on the effort. Just because an OS exists does not mean Micorsoft has some implied responsibility to support it. They develop based on the idea they will earn more money in sales than they spend on

    • Re:Makes sense (Score:5, Insightful)

      by mrRay720 ( 874710 ) on Saturday September 17, 2005 @08:49PM (#13587598)
      Funny, I thought that the idea of companies was to make money.

      Supporting your major applications on a minority platform where a large number of the users have an irrational hatred of your company anyway?

      Why the absurd claim that by not supporting every single minority OS out there, MS are not a real software company? That's like claiming that dogs aren't animals because they don't wqear contact lenses - the two ideas are completely different.

      Looking at it the other way, code should never be GPL'd. A real developer wouldn't care about the license the user of the code wants to use.. Who cares about the license the customer choses, you should support it regardless.
      Of course, with the OSS community being a 1 trick pony, I wouldn't expect anything else.

      • Re:Makes sense (Score:3, Interesting)

        by rm69990 ( 885744 )
        Yes, I'm sure the CIO's at corporations migrating to Linux on the desktop have an intense hatred of Microsoft and stay up until 4 in the morning posting about it on Slashdot.

      • Funny, I thought that the idea of companies was to make money.

        Funny, I thought the idea of companies was to make products, and that money is a means to that end.

        Why the absurd claim that by not supporting every single minority OS out there, MS are not a real software company? That's like claiming that dogs aren't animals because they don't wqear contact lenses - the two ideas are completely different.

        You are right, of course. They can choose the platforms to support. I think the belief many of

        • Funny, I thought the idea of companies was to make products, and that money is a means to that end.

          You have it completely the wrong way around. The majority of companies exist for the sole reason of making money. It's the products that are a means to an end.

          You are right, of course. They can choose the platforms to support. I think the belief many of us have is that if MS Office was producted by an independent company, it would have been ported to Linux by now. Of course, we don't know that.

          Maybe,

          • Seen from the company, the incentive is to make money. From societies point of view, the purpose of companies is to produce. We support capitalism / market economy because has proven the most efficient system to produce what we need for our welfare. However, it is not perfect, and this shows very in the case of a monopoly, esp. when it makes both OS and applications.

            Now, this is not directly related to your post, but the relevace of the second view is that we as citizens we have the right to speak up

  • Will this lead to enlightenment? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by RAMMS+EIN ( 578166 ) on Saturday September 17, 2005 @06:27PM (#13587144) Homepage Journal
    Interesting. I wonder if now, some people are going to discover that some of the tools and languages that work with Linux are really very convenient and superior to their Windows counterparts. Or that Windows using developers will finally be have some real arguments to back up their claims that their platform is superior as a development environment. At any rate, some people will learn how to write software that works on Linux (and likely other unices), which can only be a Good Thing.
    • At the same time, Microsoft would also learn of the weaknesses in the Linux application development environment, and would use that against Linux. This will be from the viewpoint of an .ASP developer, rather as only a C/C++ developer.
    • Honestly, it'll probably be such a foreign environment to most of 'em that they'll kvetch and complain... ...until finally someone says to them; "did you google for it?" or "did you ask in #whatever on freenode?"

      Then they'll blink for hours, as a man coming into the light after years sitting in a cave watching shadows...

      (apologies to Plato)
    • I'm guessing that this will lead to a buyout of Mainsoft by Microsoft. There's no way that Microsoft can allow a free plugin that works with Visual Studio and ports to Linux to exist in the marketplace. I think that's exactly what the Mainsoft folks had in mind too...

      Yeah, I know all that the stuff people want to say about "illegal" and whatnot...I used to think like that too. I've seen Microsoft get away with criminal activity too many times now to think it's NOT some type of conspiricy with the governm

  • I win! I win! (Score:5, Funny)

    by lisany ( 700361 ) <slashdotNO@SPAMthedoh.com> on Saturday September 17, 2005 @06:30PM (#13587159)
    <?php
    echo "Hello World!\n";
    ?>

  • FogCreek should enter (Score:3, Informative)

    by discordja ( 612393 ) on Saturday September 17, 2005 @06:32PM (#13587171)
    They already have an ASP to PHP compiler [joelonsoftware.com] which they use to build their FogBugz software. Note this is not available to the general public, just bringing it up in relation to the topic.

    Granted, I don't know if it's the .NET environment to PHP but I'd wager it probably is knowing FogCreek.

    I always find Joel on Software to be an enjoyable read.
    • No, as far as I'm aware, it's original ASP to PHP. Since both are plain scripting it's (relatively) easy, but going from ASP.NET to PHP would be completely different.

      Reading about it on JoS a while ago, he says that it's not a general converter either - it only works because they follow certain strict rules when coding, that the translator can take advantage of. Let is loose on masses of random code written any which way and you'd probably find bad things happen.

      A general purpose translator for this sort of
  • Starting Monday September 19, 8AM US Pacific Time: To be announced.
    Starting Friday September 23, 8AM US Pacific Time: To be announced.
    Starting Monday September 26, 8AM US Pacific Time: To be announced.

    How retarded? So to compete and be competitive, I need to take off from work as I live in New York and this is right during the middle of the work day? This basically eliminates any US coder with a full-time position.

  • I wonder when... (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Torinir ( 870836 )
    I wonder when we're gonna see the new "Winmacux" OS?

    With all the time and energy spent cross-porting applications from Linux to MacOS to Windows et al, I'd not be surprised if someone didn't attempt to make a hybrid OS that at least tries to bridge the three OS's together under one banner. It'd likely be the biggest piece of bloatware to ever grace a HDD, but it would prove interesting to see a system running MacOS, Windows, and Linux apps at the same time.

    Of course, if that were to ever happen, I could

  • Linux port of HJ-Split (Score:5, Funny)

    by wiresquire ( 457486 ) on Saturday September 17, 2005 @08:05PM (#13587477) Journal
    I've recently completed a port of HJ-Split to Linux.

    So far, I've only completed a command line interface which I've called 'split' and 'cat'.

    It should be available on most distros. Let me know what you guys think!
  • ...just port ASP.Net to Linux?
    • They already did, it is called MONO. It runs my ASP.NET apps in apache or through its own portable XSP server rather well. A little slower actually but with an acceptable performance cost ratio nevertheless.

  • Don't knot your knickers (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Gribflex ( 177733 ) on Saturday September 17, 2005 @10:16PM (#13587844) Homepage
    Before you get your knickers in a knot, I sugest that you read the article.

    No, MainSoft [mainsoft.com] is not a typo for Microsoft [microsoft.com]; MainSoft is an independent software company that makes a tool that allows for cross-platform development.

    During the PDC [microsoft.com], which was organized by Microsoft, one of the exhibitors (mainsoft) announced this contest which was intended to show off their products.

    This is not an attempt by Microsoft to do any kind of cross-platform development.

    To the best of my knowledge, neither of the groups organizing the event (MainSoft and CodeProject [codeproject.com]) are owned in whole, or in part, by Microsoft.

    If you read the disclaimer on CodeProject, you will find the following groups barred from the contest:

    • The Code Project
    • Mainsoft Corporation
    • Novell
    • Zend
    • Macromedia


    Microsoft Employees are not on this list. I really don't think that Microsoft has a great deal to do with this event.
  • Do I need to replicate all the bugs and random crashes to win?

  • Wake up everyone! (Score:3, Insightful)

    by The Slashdolt ( 518657 ) on Saturday September 17, 2005 @11:55PM (#13588108) Homepage
    People seriously need to wake up. The whole mono thing isn't about windows people moving towards linux, its about linux applications moving towards windows. People already have windows. They bought their computers from dell with windows preinstalled. Now they are looking for fun and useful applications, not to reinstall an alternative operating system.

    OK, here is a hint. The REAL application that matters is the office suite. Particularly word, excel, and powerpoint. The day you see MS write these applications in .NET and then have them run on linux is the day it will matter. MS ain't that dumb guys....

  • .. and then I tried to register. Not that I write in C#, but I often debug C# code for ms-weenies. So, hurdle 1: register for a race number.

    Dumb arse ASP page gets stuck in an infinite loop of asking me to confirm I've read the rules and conditions.

    Click yes. -> Please confirm you have read the rules and conditions -> fine, I read them -> Confirm -> Please confirm that you have read the rules and conditions -> ooh, that's an interesting ad -> click confirm -> Please confirm you h

  • I accept that registering with codeproject.com sounds fair. After all, I've got to register to participate, however this seems like an MS PR scam to me. I'm now forced to register with Microsoft's www.ASP.net site in order to download the application which has to be ported.

    "Let's compile a big database of loyal coders to seduce with even more of our .net crap. But what of all those corrupted Mono guys?

    hmm. I have an idea. A competition to make them all fall before us. Perhaps we can get them to sign

    • This is very funny. Whether or not this is a PR stunt, it's really quite funny. I downloaded the sample Issuer Tracker application and tried to install it on my windoze box. I was worried at noticing that I'm installing something called the "AP.NET Starter Kit," however I was amused on seeing:

      OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
      0 An unhandled exception has occured
      0 in your application. .. blah .. blah
      0 ....
      0 Unknown error(0x80005000)
      0 ^ [Details] [ continue ] [ Quit]
      OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

      Ex

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