[Info-vax] VMS port to x86

[John Wallace]

On Mar 26, 8:55 pm, JF Mezei <jfmezei.spam... at vaxination.ca> wrote:
> John Wallace wrote:
> > Oh dear, not that silliness again. Not running Windows may be better
> > than running Windows, but running a Linux layer underneath the
> > emulator doesn't make it a "bare metal" emulator.
>
> Not sure how much of linux is included in that vtAlpha "bare bones". But
> it is quite possible to really have a bare metal linux and this is
> commonly done for embedded systems, TVs, thermostats, TV decoders etc.
>
> In fact, when you look at the iphone, it's got BDS Unix under the hood
> but no command line utilities (and no command line). When you jailbreak
> it, the first thing it does is add the ability to access a command line
> and load all the standrad unix commands.

Well yes, any piece of smart modern consumer electronics very likely
bases its software on a custom Linux kernel, and busybox (look it up
if you don't already know it), and a few other pieces of application-
specific software. Your TV, your set top box, your cable/DSL router,
your NAS box, your media centre, etc, as well as the obvious
smartphones etc. Plus all kinds of professional kit not widely seen.

Do any of these vendors running their software on top of a Linux see
any reason to mislead (and irritate and thus discourage) their
potential customers by meaninglessly saying their application software
is running in "bare metal" mode?

Don't get me wrong, things like VMware and QEMU look like marvellous
pieces of software, as probably are the various PDP11 and VAX and
Alpha emulators (the PDP11 in JavaScript from the author of QEMU,
booting Unix V6 from a web page, is particularly mindblowing).

But none of them are "bare metal" software, and no sensible person
would to attempt to describe them as such, whatever the "industry
standard" usage of the term may have deteriorated to.

Bare metal HYPErvisor. The emphasis is on the first syllable.