From owner-freebsd-hackers Wed Feb 28 16:54:36 1996 Return-Path: owner-hackers Received: (from root@localhost) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.3/8.7.3) id QAA01955 for hackers-outgoing; Wed, 28 Feb 1996 16:54:36 -0800 (PST) Received: from covina.lightside.com (covina.lightside.com [198.81.209.1]) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.3/8.7.3) with SMTP id QAA01946 for ; Wed, 28 Feb 1996 16:54:29 -0800 (PST) Received: by covina.lightside.com (Smail3.1.28.1 #6) id m0trwdM-0009Z2C; Wed, 28 Feb 96 16:54 PST Date: Wed, 28 Feb 1996 16:54:15 -0800 (PST) From: Jake Hamby To: Terry Lambert cc: jkh@time.cdrom.com, terry@lambert.org, hasty@rah.star-gate.com, root@dihelix.com, hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Quake's out, where's that Linux ELF emulation? In-Reply-To: <199602290003.RAA09335@phaeton.artisoft.com> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: owner-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk On Wed, 28 Feb 1996, Terry Lambert wrote: > One could argue that it's better for Browsers that run on FreeBSD > to report "FreeBSD" rather than "Linux" to the web sites it runs against. Granted. I know mine is probably reporting "BSDI" (Netscape 2.0)... > One could also argue that it's better to have "FreeBSD" than "Linux" > on the outside of the box on store shelves. Now how many Linux programs have you seen on store shelves? :-) Linux books maybe, Linux CD-ROMs possibly, but no third-party apps at Egghead, the last time I checked... :-) > Finally, how do you answer "if it's a Linux program I want to run, why > shouldn't I just install Linux instead of FreeBSD?"? Because of the superior TCP/IP stack? Because of easier installation? Because it is more stable? Because of the ports collection? What about the improved security and administration features? All of these advantages carry over, whether you are running a mixture of FreeBSD "ports" and Linux apps, or even mostly Linux programs! Just like OS/2 claimed to be "a better DOS than DOS", why can't we make the (justified once we get ELF) claim of "a better Linux than Linux?" > Clearly they won't even consider a native port in that case. A native > port won't increase their "potential customer" count one iota if there > is already a version that runs on FreeBSD. Okay, granted. But as I said, if it already runs fine on FreeBSD through binary emulation, then what do you gain by demanding a FreeBSD-native port? Sure, it'd be nice, but I know I'd rather be able to run a Linux version than have no version at all! ---Jake