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From: jimr@shorty.cs.wisc.edu (Jim Robinson)
Newsgroups: comp.os.386bsd.misc,comp.os.linux.misc
Subject: Re: Impressions: FreeBSD vs Linux
Date: 10 Apr 1994 13:43:14 GMT
Organization: University of Wisconsin, Madison -- Computer Sciences Dept.
Lines: 21
Message-ID: <2o8vpi$kqb@spool.cs.wisc.edu>
References: <2n9f90$9em@great-miami.iac.net> <CnInLE.Fo4@hippo.ru.ac.za> <2o0psuINN3h5@bonnie.sax.de>
NNTP-Posting-Host: shorty.cs.wisc.edu

In article <2o0psuINN3h5@bonnie.sax.de> j@uriah.sax.de (J Wunsch) writes:
>Well, the illusion of binary compatibility is one of the biggest
>fairy-tales in the U**x history. Programs can (and should be)
>compatible at the C source level. This is what C has been made
>for.
>
>From a friend using some SVR4, running a SCO version of WordPerfect
>there: he lost his edited text since WP attempted to store it to
>an inode > 65535:-(, since SCO knows only of 16 bits of inode numbers.
>iBCS2 in practice. 99 % compatible is incompatible.


I think you may be missing the important fact that the reason we want
the emulators is because we *don't* have access to the source code.
MS Word for Windows cannot be purchused in a "Here is the source,
compile it yourself" form, but rather binary.  That binary is only
relased for MS Windows.  So we have no legal way to get the source,
don't want to run DOS, and the company will not support us, what
choice is left?  Emulators of course. 99% is better then 0%.

Jim