Date: Wed, 28 Feb 1996 18:17:04 -0800 (PST) From: Jake Hamby <jehamby@lightside.com> To: Terry Lambert <terry@lambert.org> Cc: terry@lambert.org, jkh@time.cdrom.com, hasty@rah.star-gate.com, root@dihelix.com, hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Quake's out, where's that Linux ELF emulation? Message-ID: <Pine.AUX.3.91.960228180304.25940A-100000@covina.lightside.com> In-Reply-To: <199602290103.SAA09633@phaeton.artisoft.com>
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On Wed, 28 Feb 1996, Terry Lambert wrote: > Uh, OS/2 hasn't been very successful compared to DOS (or Win95). Sure, but from what I understand, OS/2 sells a million copies a month, you just don't hear about it from the media much. Personally, I gave OS/2 (both 2.1 and "Warp") multiple chances but gave it up due to: hardware incompatibilities (on a PC that successfully ran EVERY OTHER OS couldn't boot Warp because of a bad KEYBOARD driver!), lack of native software, desire to run Win32 apps, desire not to have to do too much tweaking to get DOS progs to work, desire not to have to deal with two different UI's since Windows apps were essentially running on top of Win3.1 on top of a DOS VDM, etc... > Because it will have been regression tested on Linux but not on BSD. Still don't understand how you can realistically regression test your program for Linux considering the hundreds of different distributions + the likely modifications the user has made. Let's see: "This product tested with Slackware Linux 3.0 (Linux 1.2.13 and 1.3.42 running libc 5.0.9, ld.so 1.6, gcc 2.7.2, ELF svgalib 4.2, etc..)"!! Is it just me, or is that slightly insane? :-) I was tired of having to get, e.g. a new libc or "experimental kernel" to run XYZ program, then find weird anomalies (hey 'make' doesn't work, oops 'ppp-on' doesn't work, guess it must be that new LIBC I installed!!). FreeBSD is at least regression tested with its OWN COMPONENTS, how many Linux users can say that about their distribution (at least after they've upgraded various components)? This is still my major gripe with Linux, and it is because Linus only tracks the kernel, he has no influence over any of the other components that make up a "distribution." Things were much simpler back in the a.out days, that's for sure.. Now, how does all that compare with "This product tested with FreeBSD 2.1.0-RELEASE (using Linux libc 5.0.9, etc..)" :-) > Because a commercial software vendor does not typically offer support > for an OS running their product in an emulation environment. Granted. But I repeat, I would rather have an unsupported product than no product at all. I would rather have a vendor say their product works with FreeBSD, then find that they have 100 purchasers calling them, "This product works great! When can we expect a FreeBSD native version?" then to have no product at all, and no user base to demand a FreeBSD port. Think about it... ---Jake
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