Re: [RFC] Wine speedup through kernel module

From: Adam Sampson (azz@gnu.org)
Date: Fri Sep 08 2000 - 05:42:16 EST


On Thu, Sep 07, 2000 at 10:46:58AM +0200, Martin Dalecki wrote:
> > I've done an implementation of some of the Win32 "system calls" in a kernel
> > module in an attempt to speed up Wine.
>
> Please by no way don't include this patch into the official tree.
> It's insane due to the following:
>
> 1. Linux is UNIX not NT... (in terms of API)

I also don't think this patch should go into the official tree, but in my
case it's because it's too closely related to the WINE userspace libraries;
it should become part of the WINE tree instead. (Note that this is how other
packages such as ALSA and lm_sensors are maintained.)

However, I don't see any problems with having a kernel module to emulate a
different API. We already have code to emulate different UNIX APIs in the
IBCS system; having some support for emulating the Win32 system call
interface could potentially be useful.

> 2. WINE in itself is barely usefull - even in fact non existant, since
> there is no official stable release out there.

Flamebait, but I don't think this is true. WINE is very useful---plenty of
apps and games run on it, and it can be a real lifesaver if you get thrown a
self-extracting archive that unzip chokes on. (Note that Corel are using
WINE for Wordperfect Office under Unix now.) WINE's still-ALPHA status
reflects the caution of its developers rather than the quality of its code;
note that plenty of other packages (lesstif, kbd, WindowMaker, ORBit, ALSA,
bin86, esd, links etc.) still retain "alpha" (<1.0) version numbers despite
being stable, reliable and widely-used.

-- 

Adam Sampson azz@gnu.org - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/



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