From owner-freebsd-current Mon Oct 5 16:55:42 1998 Return-Path: Received: (from majordom@localhost) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) id QAA05643 for freebsd-current-outgoing; Mon, 5 Oct 1998 16:55:42 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from owner-freebsd-current@FreeBSD.ORG) Received: from smtp01.primenet.com (smtp01.primenet.com [206.165.6.131]) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) with ESMTP id QAA05631 for ; Mon, 5 Oct 1998 16:55:39 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from tlambert@usr05.primenet.com) Received: (from daemon@localhost) by smtp01.primenet.com (8.8.8/8.8.8) id QAA24248; Mon, 5 Oct 1998 16:54:31 -0700 (MST) Received: from usr05.primenet.com(206.165.6.205) via SMTP by smtp01.primenet.com, id smtpd024187; Mon Oct 5 16:54:29 1998 Received: (from tlambert@localhost) by usr05.primenet.com (8.8.5/8.8.5) id QAA25814; Mon, 5 Oct 1998 16:54:16 -0700 (MST) From: Terry Lambert Message-Id: <199810052354.QAA25814@usr05.primenet.com> Subject: Re: What would it take to build the FreeBSD kernel into Portable Executable (PE) format? To: ctapang@easystreet.com (Carlos C. Tapang) Date: Mon, 5 Oct 1998 23:54:16 +0000 (GMT) Cc: current@FreeBSD.ORG In-Reply-To: <000701bdec02$92e7dac0$0d787880@apex> from "Carlos C. Tapang" at Sep 29, 98 04:40:42 pm X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL25] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-freebsd-current@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG > I have been watching with interest your progress in converting from aout to > ELF. I am not ELFish and am seriously considering the idea of starting all > over and converting, at least the FreeBSD core kernel, into Microsoft's PE > format. I understand that one of the things that need to be done is to > change the bootloader to recognize the PE format. Are there other things I > need to change? (The application loader will need to be modified also, of > course). You should look at: http://www.microsoft.com/win32dev/base/pefile.htm Which describes portable executable format. > You are probably wondering, what for? Well, this is just the start of a much > bigger project I am contemplating. I am thinking of starting a project along > the lines of WINE, a Windows emulator for Linux. But instead of just an > emulator, I want to build a Windows clone. The clone will use the FreeBSD > core kernel (use process/task/thread management, virtual memory modules > only). I'm sure most of you will have a strong opinion one way or another > about this. Let's hear them! I like this idea. I think the only way to kill Windows is to make something that can do Windows job. I believe this will freeze the ABI at a particular revision. I think LessTif, if successful, will do the same to Motif. Terry Lambert terry@lambert.org --- Any opinions in this posting are my own and not those of my present or previous employers. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-current" in the body of the message