[A Note: The Information on this website is subject to change. The Pug Project is a work in progress and is not ready for end-user distribution yet.

The Pug Project

The General Argument

Short Version

Why make software available to windows users when in the long run you actually hope the windows operating system is going to vanish?

Because you cannot convert people from using Windows to using Linux if the software they need is not available on Linux or if the costs of migration seems to outweigh the advantages of switching, at least in their point of view

Long Version

Arrogance doesn't lead you anywhere. Suppose you'd like people to use the Linux operating system instead of all the other operating systems in the world such as Windows or Mac OS; how would you go about it?

You could tell them that Linux is simply better than all the other available operating system; this will make YOU feel better and the others worse; but are they using Linux? No, not yet.

You could find out what their needs are; what kind of software they need. And then you could offer them a way to use this software, to see whether it fills their needs. This way, you'd enlarge the installation base of your software, leading to more testers. And in the long run, the availability of the same software on their AND your preferred operating system will make the transitition easy for them!

What about Mac Os X?

Mac OS X is a Unix operating system; therefore it is technically quite easy to port Linux/Unix/POSIX software here.

A More Technical Description

The Pug Project consists of three parts:

The Pug Projects goals are to distribute software which is able to run cross platform (Windows/Linux/MacOsX), in the not too distant future enabling users to switch the underlying operating system (preferably from Windows to Linux, not the other way around), without having to change the software used.

It concentrates on projects which normally give a hard time trying to change the operating system such as professional audio, cases in which the costs of switching normally outweigh the advantages the new platform might give.

I tries to enable to lower the barrier from being a user to becoming a developer which is normally higher in a windows environment than it is in a linux environment, due to the two differing operating systems’ way of developing software (closed vs. open source software).

It tries to offer a package management system loosely modelled after bsd ports or gentoo portage, which also handles dependencies, therefore abolishing the need to build huge static binaries on windows, and also making it easier for users to find and install software.

It also tries to address the issue of cross compilation, therefore enabling developers to work on software for windows, but using linux as a development environment.

Implementation

The Pug Project uses Python 2.7 and py2exe in order to set up a simple to use installer fetching and installing the needed software packages.

Software

The following software is planned to be included:

Platforms

The pug project offers the following compilers:

It uses a three-step hierarchy of stability levels modelled after the debian hierarchy:

It tries to address the issue of 64bit architectures straight away, therefore also trying to give an overview of which software still needs to be adapted to run on 64bit windows systems.

A few long-time goals (sorted by priority / level of importance):

Open Hardware

Today’s hardware manufacturers are increasingly creating a closed market where products are less and less able to work as part of a bigger whole. Every big manufacturer tries to create a market for it’s own products and to create new products adjusted to this closed market in order to force customers to being locked-in.