OS X and Linux on x86

[Walt Pawley]

On 7/13/04 10:27 PM -0500, Ryan Nix wrote on OS X and Linux on x86

>On the contrary, J.T.  If you build it, and there is demand, which there
>is, people will buy it.

A simplistic view of commerce, but true enough.

>...  If Apple put some
>resources behind Wine, they could have HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS of  Windows
>applications running on OS X right out of the box.
>...
>J.T.Blaylock wrote:
>
>> Programs in running WINE aren't really running natively. Sure, the CPU
>> instructions are the same, but its an OS inside an OS, like the OS X
>> Classic environment or MOL. People won't go for that, I think. If OS X
>> was released for x86 tomorrow, there would be no programs to run on
>> it. Yeah, they run on Windows and Linux, but not OS X. People would
>> not want to recompile Linux apps for OS X, even in the cases where it
>> is possible.

As I understand WINE, it works primarily because it's running on x86
hardware (ie. the same instructions executed as those in a Windoze box) and
primarily is concerned with mapping APIs, not with basic execution. This is
highly analogous to running Classic in OS X (except that I believe classic
includes a 68K emulator as well as API mapping - after all, that's how the
early Mac OS came up).

Assuming that WINE does not provide an x86 emulator, porting it to the Mac
would not have much use. I've seen posts of people combining WINE with such
an emulator and having some success.

-- 
Walter M. Pawley <walt@wump.org>
Wump Research & Company
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