From owner-freebsd-hackers Tue May 23 20:48:15 2000 Delivered-To: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org Received: from cs.rice.edu (cs.rice.edu [128.42.1.30]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 0FF7C37BA76 for ; Tue, 23 May 2000 20:48:12 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from aron@cs.rice.edu) Received: from noel.cs.rice.edu (noel.cs.rice.edu [128.42.1.136]) by cs.rice.edu (8.9.0/8.9.0) with ESMTP id WAA10727; Tue, 23 May 2000 22:48:11 -0500 (CDT) From: Mohit Aron Received: (from aron@localhost) by noel.cs.rice.edu (8.9.0/8.9.0) id WAA09825; Tue, 23 May 2000 22:48:10 -0500 (CDT) Message-Id: <200005240348.WAA09825@noel.cs.rice.edu> Subject: Re: FreeBSD kernel as a replacement for Linux kernel To: protozoa@locutus.ghs.ssd.k12.wa.us (Dan Feldman) Date: Tue, 23 May 2000 22:48:10 -0500 (CDT) Cc: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org In-Reply-To: from "Dan Feldman" at May 23, 2000 08:34:50 PM X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.5 PL2] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG > > On the other hand, commercial apps usually have very precise instructions > as to what one should do. If you're a little creative you can generally > break the rules to get these to run on FreeBSD. For instance, I installed > StarOffice by timing the length of the binary first-stage installer (which > is broken on my FreeBSD system), running it again and stopping it just > before it finishes, and then finding the newly-extracted second-stage > installer in the /tmp directory. (I'm pretty sure the installer works > better on newer versions of FreeBSD). Yes, making StarOffice work for FreeBSD was a real pain - before FreeBSD put out the port that is. Your example above also demonstrates how difficult it is sometimes to get Linux related stuff to work on FreeBSD. I believe even to make netscape plugins (for Linux) work, you need to use the linux version of netscape - not the FreeBSD one (at least this used to be true some time back). All these nifty things really scare any new users away from FreeBSD. > > I think the answer is more to convince application vendors to go the extra > inch and write a back-up install script that's a little more portable than > their fancy GUI things, rather than asking the kernel hackers to go the > extra mile to ensure every Linux program works perfectly. > Which clearly is an impossible job. Much easier to convince one party than to convince the one million vendors out there. :) But seriously, I think the problem can be fixed with a more transparent interface for Linux programs. Rather than requiring Linux libraries to be put in /compat/linux, it would be much easier if everything could be put in /usr/lib. Which probably means having the SAME interface as Linux. - Mohit To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message