From owner-freebsd-hackers Mon Feb 26 04:46:15 1996 Return-Path: owner-hackers Received: (from root@localhost) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.3/8.7.3) id EAA16703 for hackers-outgoing; Mon, 26 Feb 1996 04:46:15 -0800 (PST) Received: from haldjas.folklore.ee (Haldjas.folklore.ee [193.40.6.121]) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.3/8.7.3) with SMTP id EAA16695 for ; Mon, 26 Feb 1996 04:46:07 -0800 (PST) Received: (from narvi@localhost) by haldjas.folklore.ee (8.6.12/8.6.12) id OAA04564; Mon, 26 Feb 1996 14:46:04 +0200 Date: Mon, 26 Feb 1996 14:46:04 +0200 (EET) From: Narvi To: Christoph Kukulies cc: hackers@FreeBSD.org Subject: Re: Win32 (was:Re: Go SCSI! Big improvement...) In-Reply-To: <199602261106.MAA00533@gilberto.physik.rwth-aachen.de> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: owner-hackers@FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk On Mon, 26 Feb 1996, Christoph P. Kukulies wrote: [... Start deleted ...] > > A point about which I must disagree... Win32 is not as good. Perhaps it > > "Win32 is not as good" - maybe, maybe not. You see best the effect > of "what is good" and what is used widespread when you compare > L*n*x with FreeBSD with FreeBSD is standing for "what is good" :-) > I know the problems with "very good, just not that widespead" and "ultimate crap - but people just like it". The thing between Win32 is not that much it's usefullness - just the fact that it makes programming things at least sensible (now where was that winmm32.dll? the way to make win31 use 32 bit data/programs before win32s came - most people probably even haven't heard about it as it was unuseable for programming). But to bring FreeBSD to the desktop you need a bit more than just emulation - otherwise microsoft will be able to point and say - on the same hardware, FreeBSD runs all (counting, of course only windows programs) programs mmuch slowlier. And also have a thing to compare Win95 against on the charts... > Win32 is strong at existing software base, MFC, GUI, MSVC++ IDE, debuggers, > bitmaps/bitblt. > I don't like it particularly, I just see it's impact on the industry. > It would be a snap to construct a GUI based FreeBSD installation dialog > under MSVC/MFC, at least what the outer appearance is concerned. Ever tried Tcl/Tk? You can do the same under FreeBSD/XFree86 in at least the same time + the tools are free. > A Win32 implementation could be native and maybe server client based > as well. I don't know how far off an emulation of the Win32 PE format > (portable executable) under FreeBSD would be. The implementation should be native. At least as I see it, all other ways will cause too much overhead... Anyways, at least one thing is sure - as soon as even one enhancement gets done, it will be in the next MS product and without any mentioning of the original authours. > While we are at it, what can 'Willows' supply here? > > > > will never be (just think about DOS - it *did* become better over the > > time of it's existence). If the things go on as they are now, IMHO > > FreeBSD will have better SMP support than Win32... > > > > Emulating another system is never as good as running in native mode, no > > matter how hard you try. How about making headers and libraries which > > would allow you to compile you win32 code for FreeBSD and X11 with little > > to no changes? It would allow all those shareware people list that their > > products are available for several platrorms, one of which is real unix :) > > > > Sander. > > > > --Chris Christoph P. U. Kukulies kuku@gil.physik.rwth-aachen.de > Sander