> Thanks for your quick responses. First, I'm encouraged. I haven't yet
> heard any show-stoppers.
>
> Second, here's why I'm interested. There are a lot of people (e.g., in the
> engineering community) who need Linux to do serious computing and Windows
> to share the results. These are people who are pro-Linux (for its
> capabilities) but not necessarily anti-Microsoft. Dual booting is a major
> pain and having two separate computers is expensive. Emulation is a great
> idea, but it's not easy either. (Through the beauty of freeware, however,
> it's likely that a substantial amount of Wine could be recycled into a dual
> processor, dual OS system, whether implemented via PCI or shared memory.)
>
> My customers would be ecstatic if they could, as Robert G. Brown put it,
> hot-key between Linux and Windows. Performance wouldn't be a major issue.
> >From what I've read, the dual processor Pentium board provides only
> marginally better performance anyway. What I would hope from this
> configuration is super convenience at a small incremental cost.
>
> How would RAM be shared? Run Windows in low memory, relocate Linux to a
> higher region. I'm brand new to Linux myself, having been a Mac user for 5
> years and a Lisp machine user for 12 years before that, so I have no idea
> if this is possible.
Should be very duable :)
That's more or less how dosemu operates.
> Why not a Windows app precompiler, as Robert G. Brown suggests? This
> sounds similar to interpreting Java byte-codes. This approach is
> equivalent in complexity to emulation, though it has greater opportunities
> to apply techniques of compiler optimization. Once Wine works, then
> Robert's technique can be used to speed things up.
Caldera has this for Win 3.1 AFAIK.... And has for some time now.
It's actually identical to the wine problem.... but not as CPU intensive.
> Yes, there is a lot of work to making such a system work, but if you know
> of a technical reason that makes it impossible, please tell me.
Hmmm... All things considered:
As a shared CPU environment: No go unless Linux can tell Mickysoft
that it's CPU is the only one on the motherboard.
(intercept PCI calls, emulate a stock motherboard)
As an emulation environment:
Hardware emulator AKA dosemu + linked-in
kernel32.dll, user32.dll, and gdi32.dll
! this should be VERY duable - Wine's heading in this
direction but is also emulating a lot of other .dll's
that "don't share nice", such as winsock.dll
As a subprocessor board:
Any reason an intel system can't run an orange board or
equivalent? :)
[I don't know much about Mac hardware - I only have an old
laptop]
What do y'all think?
Methinks it's mostly a userspace problem... except for being able to grab
(and keep) a CPU...
And since Wine isn't developing all that quickly maybe a buncha people
should maybe lend a hand? :)
[kernel32.dll emu was last I knew quite weak... and unfortunately
necessary for just about every win32 program!]
G'day, eh? :)
- Teunis