From owner-freebsd-questions Fri May 12 11:04:17 1995 Return-Path: questions-owner Received: (from majordom@localhost) by freefall.cdrom.com (8.6.10/8.6.6) id LAA16477 for questions-outgoing; Fri, 12 May 1995 11:04:17 -0700 Received: from cs.weber.edu (cs.weber.edu [137.190.16.16]) by freefall.cdrom.com (8.6.10/8.6.6) with SMTP id LAA16468 for ; Fri, 12 May 1995 11:04:15 -0700 Received: by cs.weber.edu (4.1/SMI-4.1.1) id AA02180; Fri, 12 May 95 11:57:40 MDT From: terry@cs.weber.edu (Terry Lambert) Message-Id: <9505121757.AA02180@cs.weber.edu> Subject: Re: a couple questions... To: buckwild@u.washington.edu (Mark Steven Tamola) Date: Fri, 12 May 95 11:57:39 MDT Cc: freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.org In-Reply-To: from "Mark Steven Tamola" at May 12, 95 01:58:50 am X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4dev PL52] Sender: questions-owner@FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk > 1. how reliable is ibcs2 binary compatibility? will i be able to buy > anything through mail order and run it on my system? Most programs are not written in strict conformance to IBCS2; that is, they use OS features specific to the platform they are sold on. That means not all programs will run. Very specifically, most programs using networking require the use of /dev/socket to work. You could port the Linux code for this rather easily (it's a per use port because it hasn't been rewritten to be free of GPL). All X programs use networking unless run locally over UNIS domain sockets. The IBCS2 dictates installation tools. Unless you can pull them from an SVR3/SVR4/SCO box, you will probably have to install by hand (a rather complicated process, but it can be done). On the plus side, I have run or have seen running (some after the hack for /dev/socket support) commercial versions of: o Lotus 1-2-3 o Sybase o SCO FoxBase o Microsoft Word o The SCO developer's kit o The SCO product packaging utilities o All the games from an SVR3 box o The WordPerfect for X demo for SVR3 > 2. when is linux emulation coming? netbsd has it now and is something i > enjoyed playing with. It's partially there in current. Partially means "not enough to run DOOM, so don't ask". It will run many Linux binaries available from commercial vendors who happen to have Linux versions (I've seen 3, including a "Brief" clone that is advertised in Linux Jounal, run without hiccups). > 3. i noticed a lot of the man pages are very non-standard in their > formatting (the bsd man pages were all the same but a bunch of others > like the gnu pages and some handmade ones were formatted all wrong). is > there a group that deals with documentation? since i'm not the most > adept programmer is there a way i can contribute by fixing the > documentation up? (i also noticed a bunch of incorrect references to > commands on some pages.) Contact doc@freebsd.org. They will appreciate the help, I'm sure. Terry Lambert terry@cs.weber.edu --- Any opinions in this posting are my own and not those of my present or previous employers.