LinuxQuestions.org - New revolutionary Win/Linux emulator out there?

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New revolutionary Win/Linux emulator out there?

From the article:

Quote:

Operating system call mapping from any Unix/Linux-like operating system or any mainframe operating system to any Unix/Linux-like operating system is supported.

It would take a _lot_ more work to port all the win32 calls to POSIX calls. After all, that's what the wine project has been trying to do all this time. I don't think this will help use windows apps on linux anytime soon.

Yep, this looked to me more like porting unix apps over various other hardware runing unix OS's... Been through this on other boards...

The wine project and it's specialist semi-commercial releases crossover and winex still offer the best long term solution for win apps on linux...

Do you think that this emulator will make the big step? And if yes will M$ let the company to do it or will M$ just buy the company?

I'm afraid there's no magic bullet, just hard work. Sorry.

This could be used to port WINE to all *nixes, though, instead of just x86. It still doesn't solve all the problems WINE is facing.

i'm not to up on WINE and its issues, it works great for me and thats all i've really focused on. What are some of the issues WINE faces?

WINE has to duplicate all the windows standard library functions and many of the system calls in order to achieve binary compatibility. They are hampered by the fact that Microsoft isn't about to give them any assistance. There are a lot of poorly-documented things that the WINE people have to find out by themselves. Since many windows programs don't work under WINE, they obviously haven't done a perfect job.

There is also the fact that Microsoft is free to change the windows specifications. WINE will always be playing catch-up.

such liez.. =/ got me all excited and stuff =D ...

This article has been largely debunked on a number of forums already as marketing fluff.

I haven't read the article myself, but two strikes:

1. it's Wired

2. it's claiming to be a "universal OS emulator" and suddenly solve all problems.

Quote:

2. it's claiming to be a "universal OS emulator" and suddenly solve all problems.

It isn't, actually. It's claiming to be able to emulate UNIX-style OSes from other UNIX-style OSes on different architectures. This doesn't seem impossible to me. VMWare does this and more. Their claim of negligible overhead is a bit more dubious, maybe.

Ah well if they are only talking about emulation between Unices, then it's possible, but then, isn't that what POSIX is for?

Portable programs are the answer, not emulators.

VMWare, WINE, and all the rest have a short shelf-life. In five or ten years no-one will remember them.

Quote:

cat mcbride > /dev/null

How about mv? ;)

There is already work on QEMU, which was developed to allow Windows x86 EXE binaries to run on alternative archs. This has performance penalties though and doesn't solve the problem that not all programs work on Wine.

Quote:

Ah well if they are only talking about emulation between Unices, then it's possible, but then, isn't that what POSIX is for?

Portable programs are the answer, not emulators.

But not all programs are open source (and therefore can't be recompiled for a new CPU). Lots of businesses have ancient programs for old architectures still running. If they want to upgrade to anything modern, they need to invest a lot of money in getting new software and retraining everyone. This tool can help in these circumstances by allowing them to keep the old software after upgrading.

Quote:

quote:
cat mcbride > /dev/null

How about mv? ;)

I was just expressing the desire to redirect his output to somewhere where it won't bother people.

Code:

$touch mcbride

$mv mcbride /dev/null

mv: inter-device move failed: `mcbride' to `/dev/null'; unable to remove target: Permission denied

$cat mcbride > /dev/null

$

So, you see, my way is better ;)

@mchearn: From what I can see, this new thing is pretty much equivalent to QEMU, except that it also translates *NIX system calls and standard library functions. It also seems to have some pretty cool ideas (going by the article) for increased performance, but then this could just be marketing crap.