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From: cracauer@wavehh.hanse.de (Martin Cracauer)
Subject: Apple/NeXTStep/Mach and free Unixes (Re: Pentium Pro and FreeBSD)
Message-ID: <1996Dec30.194620.12275@wavehh.hanse.de>
Reply-To: cracauer@wavehh.hanse.de
Organization: Private site
References: <32C063E4.69BE@ibm.net> <32C0DF02.41C67EA6@freebsd.org> <tporczyk.851889405@shellx> <32C725AC.41C67EA6@freebsd.org> <tporczyk.851965555@shellx> <tporczyk.851966319@shellx>
Date: Mon, 30 Dec 96 19:46:20 GMT
Lines: 42
Xref: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc:33280
tporczyk@best.com (Tony Porczyk) writes:
>Oh, something off the subject: With the recent announcement of Apple
>going with OpenStep+MacOS, how many people are afraid it may be a
>serious threat to free unices? I must admit that a possibility of
>having a UNIX system (unless Apple manages to castrate OpenStep) that
>runs inexpensive Mac apps natively is incredibly appealing to me.
Not if you had to run NeXTStep/Mach some day before. I tend to claim
that running a slow-as-hell outdated Machkernel with a semi-standard,
non-exchangeable 4.[2-3]BSD personality wasn't exactly what I felt
comfortable with. Especially if you count the sources coming with
{Free,Net}BSD and Linux.
There's a guite useable Mac emulator for Linux that might run on
FreeBSD as well, didn't try. Of course, that's an emulator for the CPU
as well, but a P6-200 should emulate a 68K Mac quite well.
Once upon a time that was AUX, which was exactly what you're looking
for, a Unix system that ran most Mac Apps nativly on 68K
Macintoshes. Of course, Apple managed to keep the Unix part so
semi-useable that Unix people couldn't get happy with it. Apple then
polled opinions of users, found out that most AUX users aren't really
interested in Unix, used that to claim they don't need Unix
functionality and returned to maintain an underlying kludge as an OS.
For me, it looks like vendors actually don't *want* a useable Unix
functionality in their base OS (look at the Posix "support" in Windows
NT). When people come along to like the additional functionality, the
vendors will have to support it, maintain (bug-)compatiblity in future
versions etc etc etc.
If we ("real" Unix users) want applications, we better prepare to
emulate well or provide functionality that is attractive for
application writers (no change for Unix and GUI apps for now).
Martin
--
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Martin_Cracauer@wavehh.hanse.de http://cracauer.cons.org Fax.: +4940 5228536
"As far as I'm concerned, if something is so complicated that you can't ex-
plain it in 10 seconds, then it's probably not worth knowing anyway"- Calvin