Date: Thu, 21 Jul 2011 10:52:28 +0200 From: "C. P. Ghost" <cpghost@cordula.ws> To: perryh@pluto.rain.com Cc: Ggatten@waddell.com, freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: 2020: Will BSD and Linux be relevant anymore? Message-ID: <CADGWnjXjtZwXPdFQJ8dFfZ_bG8hSp6LiJt4QvsSbS7umYG=EqQ@mail.gmail.com> In-Reply-To: <4e28160e.bVryeJCK1esNt615%perryh@pluto.rain.com> References: <alpine.BSF.2.00.1107190736560.27391@gwdu60.gwdg.de> <CAGy-%2Bi_phtNbTh7SHhockqTuGrv%2Bd2ZLn0_6A9aKEySYO0MgTw@mail.gmail.com> <24466_1311199850_4E27526A_24466_7987_1_D9B37353831173459FDAA836D3B43499C521866E@WADPMBXV0.waddell.com> <4e28160e.bVryeJCK1esNt615%perryh@pluto.rain.com>
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On Thu, Jul 21, 2011 at 2:05 PM, <perryh@pluto.rain.com> wrote: > Gary Gatten <Ggatten@waddell.com> wrote: > >> ... can a HAL be developed that runs on BSD that "emulates" >> Winblow$ such that any driver written for Winblow$ will "work" >> on *BSD? >> ... >> Something in the back of my head says there was / is something >> along this line already available or in the works, but I can't >> recall for sure. > > I _think_ we may already have something along these lines for > NDIS (network) drivers, but I don't know how well it works. Not using it today, but it helped me in the past for some exotic NICs. Regarding the "Windowsulator", I'm wondering if such a compat layer would be possible. Don't Windows drivers all get created by some kind of DDK/WDK, against a stable kernel-ABI? I'm not familiar with Windows, but I don't think a typical windows driver as written by a hardware vendor would manipulate the windows kernel internals (data structures) directly, right? If that's correct, we "merely" need to catch the ABI up- and down-calls from and to the windows driver, and translate them into regular FreeBSD syscalls (maybe augmented by a compat helper library?). Since this is exactly the approach taken by the Linuxulator, I fail to see why a similar method hasn't been tried for those windows kernel driver (binary blobs). Maybe some artificial restrictions like, say, patents are standing in the way? Or a technical restriction like such binary blobs being encrypted with a public key, and only usable from Windows kernel with their own secret key? Only windows kernel hackers can tell. -cpghost. -- Cordula's Web. http://www.cordula.ws/
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