OS X and Linux on x86

[Ryan Nix]

Wine would already work on OS X for x86 because of its FreeBSD 
underpinnings:

 From their website:  http://winehq.org/

Wine is an Open Source implementation of the Windows 
<http://www.microsoft.com/windows/> API on top of X 
<http://www.xfree86.org/> and Unix.

Think of Wine as a Windows compatibility layer. Wine does not require 
Microsoft Windows, as it is a completely alternative implementation 
consisting of 100% Microsoft-free code, but it can optionally use native 
system DLLs if they are available. Wine provides both a development 
toolkit (Winelib) for porting Windows sources to Unix and a program 
loader, allowing many unmodified Windows binaries to run on x86-based 
Unixes, including Linux <http://www.linux.org/>, FreeBSD 
<http://www.freebsd.org/>, and Solaris 
<http://wwws.sun.com/software/solaris/>.

I urge anyone with a Linux x86 box to try Codeweavers version.  Its 
awesome.  Disney paid Codeweavers to make Photoshop 7 run.  Imagine what 
Apple could do.  ;)

Ryan




Walt Pawley wrote:

>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.
>
>  
>