Re: Maybe a stupid question
On Tue, Oct 19, 2004 at 03:58:20PM -0300, Peter Cordes wrote:
> It's a fast CPU (significantly faster than Athlon), with SSE2, and with
> good power-saving when idle. (Down to 22W max at 1GHz, from 89W max at max
> speed.) It's not like it's crippled in 32bit mode.
Yeah is sure does make for one nice x86 system, even in 32bit mode.
> Hmm, you mean route all your net traffic through vmware? That's so crazy
> it just might work. (I wrote the paragraph below about the kernel-userspace
> boundary before I read this carefully...) Maybe vmware even wouldn't be
> needed if UML can talk to hardware. Anyone care to comment on getting Linux
> under vmware to talk to hardware?
You can't. It only talks to virtual hardware (or real usb hardware
through virtual usb connections or real scsi devices through a virtual
scsi adapter). Now if only it could talk to real pci devices through a
virtual pci bus people could use odd pci hardware with windows in
vmware.
> I'd say having to use ndiswrapper is totally stupid, but I guess there's
> not much choice in AMD64 laptops at this point :(
There is 'buy a supported pcmcia card' :)
> the kernel-user boundary is well definined and has a limited number of
> system calls. The in-kernel stuff is constantly changing with new kernel
> releases, and probably would be harder to wrap in an emulation layer.
> (Besides, in-kernel function calls don't go through a context switch
> normally, and you'd have to introduce that, or put an x86 emulator like
> bochs in the kernel if you wanted to actually run 32bit code.) Perhaps
> pre-translating the ia32 code to amd64 code, like what gcj can do for java
> binaries -> machine code, would be better.
Well perhaps someone can come up with a way to make ndiswrappers work in
64bit mode using bounce buffers for anything above 4G (which is like
never on a laptop at this time). I don't actually know the internals
involved so I could be completely crazy here. :)
> It all boils down to open souce: good and flexible, closed source: bad and
> limiting. Depending on binary-only drivers from anyone puts you at their
> mercy. But you probably already knew that and didn't need me to lecture
> you...
Well broadcom seems to be no help so far for wireless specs.
Len Sorensen
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