Return to BSD News archive
Path: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au!newshost.anu.edu.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!simtel!zombie.ncsc.mil!news.mathworks.com!newsfeed.internetmci.com!chi-news.cic.net!uwm.edu!caen!pm051-03.dialip.mich.net!fprefect From: Matt Slot <fprefect@umich.edu> Newsgroups: comp.os.linux.advocacy,comp.os.linux.development.system,comp.unix.bsd.netbsd.misc,comp.sys.mac.programmer.misc Subject: Re: OpenMac update Date: 24 Oct 1995 00:24:35 GMT Organization: University of Michigan Lines: 24 Distribution: world Message-ID: <46hbo3$85k@srvr1.engin.umich.edu> References: <46741t$a70@srvr1.engin.umich.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: @pm051-03.dialip.mich.net Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-Newsreader: Nuntius 2.0.4_PPC X-XXMessage-ID: <ACB1AB1C4201066E@pm051-03.dialip.mich.net> X-XXDate: Mon, 23 Oct 1995 01:27:08 GMT Xref: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au comp.os.linux.advocacy:25484 comp.os.linux.development.system:11478 comp.unix.bsd.netbsd.misc:1238 comp.sys.mac.programmer.misc:8651 Ron Nicholson, rhn@sgi.com writes: > If Tenon can port *nix on top of the MacOS abstraction layer, why > can't this be done with Linux? The MacOS API is much more stable > than any particular Mac Hardware interface. And you can always > kill the Finder if you don't want to see the Mac user interface > or use any Mac applications. > > I still haven't seen a reason why Linux can't be ported to > Softwindows 2.0 (which emulates a full 486). Actually the Linux and MacBSD teams are aiming to write a full OS on top of the Mac hardware, rather than piggybacking on (and competing with) the MacOS. There are many advantages for going down to the metal, and the only barrier is information (or lack thereof). I think that the SoftWindows and PC-board-in-a-Mac alternatives have been investigated, but I don't know what the results were. I would guess that there are a few fundamental differences in the way they *fake* being an intel processor/hardware system. MachTen is a pretty cool program, but the strength of UNIX and its various flavors is the preemption of resources. Matt