[Info-vax] RMS intro

[Dan Cross]

In article <kvjaabF2supU1 at mid.individual.net>,
bill  <bill.gunshannon at gmail.com> wrote:
>On 1/2/2024 2:42 PM, Dan Cross wrote:
>> In article <kvj3t3Fbk87U1 at mid.individual.net>,
>> bill  <bill.gunshannon at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> On 1/2/2024 12:41 PM, Dan Cross wrote:
>>>> In article <umvlnj$2cmas$1 at dont-email.me>,
>>>> Arne Vajhøj  <arne at vajhoej.dk> wrote:s.
>>>>
>>>>> And they have known about both concepts for a long
>>>>> time. WSL1 concept goes back to 90's - Win32 API on
>>>>> top of NT kernel and Win9x kernel.
>>>>
>>>> Not really, but the basic concept of emulating a system
>>>> interface on another system goes much further back than
>>>> that; e.g., PA1050 on TOPS-20, or the DTSS environment on
>>>> Multics.
>>>
>>> And lets not forget The Software Tools Virtual Operating System
>>> in 1980 that gave you a bunch of the Unix API on everything from
>>> CP/M to Exec-8 on the Univac 1100 including all of the DEC systems
>>> of the time.  :-)
>> 
>> Indeed!  Though that was more about a suite of useful
>> functionality for source-level compatibility, more than running
>> unmodified binaries on compatible machines.
>
>One of the big "selling" points for Unix was always source
>compatibility.  In the early Linux days there were compatibility
>compatibility libraries that were supposed to make Linux stuff
>run on BSD.  I never had much luck with it and usually found it
>easier to just recompile under BSD.

Yeah.  It's much easier to take source and get it to run
somewhere else, though increasingly often I find Linux
assumptions baked into a lot of code.  But Linux is the big boy
on the block, so they can get away with it.

I similarly found the Linux binary compatibility stuff in BSD
did a mediocre job.  Similarly with other compability things
over the years: I brought up Torek's port of 4.4BSD-Lite on a
SPARCstation 1 by backporting some bits from -Encumbered, and
while it _could_ run SunOS 4.x binaries, they dumped core
disturbingly often.

	- Dan C.