Date: Wed, 05 May 1999 15:47:28 -0600 From: Brett Glass <brett@lariat.org> To: "Jordan K. Hubbard" <jkh@zippy.cdrom.com> Cc: freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: PCWeek article by Anne Chen -- Comments Message-ID: <4.2.0.37.19990505154151.04423340@localhost> In-Reply-To: <37654.925939627@zippy.cdrom.com> References: <Your message of "Wed, 05 May 1999 11:23:32 EDT." <Pine.OSF.3.95q.990505112149.15848A-100000@poirot.umd.edu>
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At 02:27 PM 5/5/99 -0700, Jordan K. Hubbard wrote: >The fundamental problem is that "emulation" is the wrong word here but >people use it anyway. What FreeBSD offers isn't "Linux emulation", >it's "Linux binary compatibility." The dividing line may seem thin, >but "Emulation" conjures up all kinds of visions of the binary >actually being emulated through some tortuous series of extra steps >rather than a binary simply calling a different syscall table (not an >extra one, just a *different* one). > >Be sure and try to make that point in any interviews you do; I do. >[And I'm sure Brett has something to say about this, but I don't care. :)] Of *course* I have something to say about it. Yes, it's more efficient than what is often called "emulation," and that's good. But it's still not what the application was designed to run on, and that's what the Pointy Haired Boss cares about. The product is less likely to be tested on the emulator; tech support won't know the emulator's quirks; the file system conventions are different; yada yada yada. Given that Linux is free, he will have NO significant reason not to switch OSes. In fact, the availability of the application for Linux is by itself ample motivation to do so. People adopt OSes to run applications, not the other way around. It may be regrettable, but it's so. IBM learned it the hard way. --Brett To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
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