[Wine] What Windows apps stand in the way of switching to Linux at your shop?

[Molle Bestefich]

Dan Kegel wrote:
> Well, I wanted to add city governments, but none of the
> apps they need are on the market; they're all homegrown VB apps.
> Church is the closest I could come to city governments;
> the church management app I'm testing is a VB app,
> and is at least a straw man standin for those unobtainable government apps.

Thanks for the explanation.

> > Do you want them anyway?
>
> Sure.  What market segment?

Hmm.  I have to name it?
Well, "People that perform their work using computers", then.

The software is Check Point SecuRemote and SecureClient.

The win32 version runs as a service.  When enabled, it captures all
network traffic and matches it against a corporate security policy. 
If outgoing packets match whatever rules defined, they can be
encrypted and sent to the corporate network by VPN.

So, it's a VPN client and a personal firewall in one, with policies
defined by your {government,organization,company,whatever}.

If I had to guess, I'd say that 50% of mid-size+ corporations and most
governments use the Check Point firewall.  They'll be using SecuRemote
or SecureClient for all their home workplaces, which means that every
single one of their users' workplace-provided PCs won't be able to use
Linux before this stuff works.

Alternatives - Linux native version?
I think there was a Linux SecuRemote once, but AFAIR development
falled behind and it stopped working at some point.  Or something.  It
was probably fixed to a specific Linux kernel, too.  Check Point does
not seem to have any kind of commitment to Linux as a desktop OS, so I
don't think that's going to change anytime soon.

Alternatives - IPSEC?
The Check Point firewall can be set up to accept IPSEC connections as
well as the SecuRemote/SecureClient stuff, but it's much more
nightmarish to configure.  I can't imagine any FW admin doing that
unless (s)he was absolutely forced to, so most installations probably
won't have that option.

Free?
The client tools are free (as in beer) to use.
If anyone could ever get it to run, connectivity could be tested
against any random corporate firewall (of course, logging in and
establishing VPN wouldn't be allowed).

Current version datasheet:
http://www.checkpoint.com/products/downloads/vpn-1_clients_datasheet.pdf

Version-to-be datasheet:
http://www.checkpoint.com/products/downloads/Integrity_SecureClient_datasheet.pdf

Where to get it?
You can have the software sent to you by Check Point, but you will
have to pay shipping costs for the CD.  On the plus side, the CD also
contains an evaluation version of Check Point's firewall and other
stuff.

Otherwise you can Google for a version.
At the time of this writing that fx. gave me these download locations:
http://scripts.uni2.dk/safeoffice/SecuRemote_Client.exe
http://www.tks.buffalo.edu/dir_office/mainop/secuRemote/ (select
Windows version)
http://www.checkpoint.com/techsupport/downloads/bin/securemote/5_0/53328/srsc_53328_w2k.exe

What's missing from Wine?
I'm guessing win32 services and ndiswrapper-like stuff?

Other products in the same market segment?
I'm guessing that Cisco at least has a similar product.


Phew.  Sorry for the lengthy e-mail!