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SubjectRe: Wlinux vs. LWin95, looking at the alternative
yes well, given this entire argument, i still think that if you want to
*SERIOUSLY* do something about use of dos/win apps on linux, work on wine
and dosemu. i was utterly SHOCKED at the latest versions of both. they're
getting *really* good. but yet, dosemu still chokes on some DPMI like
quake, and Wine has almost no shell32 support. i'm no code genius, so
please don't tell me to get off my rear and start fixing them..

but if there's anyone with the knowledge and the drive to do so, go for
it! someday i envision loading up win95 under dosemu, and having an
identical window of explorer.exe under wine right next to it.

there is no 'sky' when computing. we have no limits.

> > > > As I understand it, there are only a few commands that
> > > > can't be properly virtualized on the i386 processors. Is
> > >
> > > They will trap with 'invalid instruction', and can (in
> > > theory) be deassembled and emulated JIT...
> > > [well, _can_ they??? I don't know enough about x86 to really know]
> >
> > anything can be emulated. don't ever think otherwise. there is currently a
> > working nintendo 64 emulator for win95. *anything* can be emulated on
> > *any* hardware (provided the display is suitable).
> >
> > > > it possible that there are only a few tiny patches to the
> > > > Win95 `binary' that need to be made to make it behave itself
> > > > in a virtualized 386 environment? Perhaps someone who knows
> > > > more about this than me can comment ...
>
> Sure, anything can be *emulated*, but the real problem is
> running the emulated binary at near to full speed as possible.
> This is why virtualizing the 386 is a better approach (given
> that writing a really good JIT compiler for 386 opcodes is
> difficult).
>
> I don't know the full intricacies of this, so this should be
> taken with a pinch of salt, but as I understood it, various
> instructions which should cause traps don't. An example is
> popping a stack word into the flags register which could alter
> certain system-specific flags in kernel mode. The hypothesis
> (not proven) is that Win95 probably doesn't do such things
> in many places, and so it might be feasible to patch the binary
> where it does this to make it behave in a virtualized 386
> environment.
>
> Of course, you are then open to MS changing the way future
> releases of Windows work to make these patches more and more
> difficult to achieve, particularly if this approach were
> to be successful and everyone started running their Win
> programs under Linux :-)

_ _ __ __ _ _ _
| / |/ /_ __/ /_____ | Nuke Skyjumper |
| / / // / '_/ -_) | "Master of the Farce" |
|_ /_/|_/\_,_/_/\_\\__/ _|_ nuke@bayside.net _|


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