Re: Current Status
On Sun, Sep 28, 2003 at 11:48:26PM +0100, Saqib Shaikh wrote:
> Hi Jakob
>
> Thanks for your reply. Is there any information about the original aims of
> this project, and how far people got? I may, if the amount of work required
Dig here:
http://lists.debian.org/debian-win32/
> was reasonable, be interested in pushing this project forward - at first
> look it doesn't seem too hard, but I may well be mistaken.
The approach taken was to port many of the underpinning unix
and debian utilities to windows, via cygwins libc. (So cygwin was to
be forked.)
This is pretty much like one of the debian ports to BSD.
One of these used not only a BSD kernel instead of linux, but
also the BSD libc. This debian-win32 version would be much the same.
All programs would have to be recompiled for this libc.
At least that is how I understood how the port was going to be done.
Since then, I have come to believe another approach altogether would
be best. Not that the described approach would not work, but it is
a lot of work, and nobody seems to have that kind of time.
What I believie would be best is this!
http://LINE.sourceforge.net/
This excellent program emulates the Linux kernel. So, to port
Debian to Windows, very little has to be done. The standard
Debian i386 could be run under Windows, and Debian would think
it runs on Linux, when in fact it would be running on an
emulation of Linux.
In fact the author already has run complex Linux applications
running:
http://LINE.sourceforge.net/shots.php
So what has to be done is getting the Debian installer to run
under LINE. Or at provide some sort of already-installed-minimal
Debian configure for LINE.
That would take of all console based applications. To run graphical
apps, just install an X-server on Windows. You could even use
Cygwins X-server, for extra confusion. :-)
LINE is really awesome. I can not believe it so unknown as it is.
If you look at
https://sourceforge.net/docman/display_doc.php?docid=3328&group_id=22093
You will see that the author has brilliant ideas. NSO for example.
> Presumably you have an interest in using Unix-like tools under Win32
> yourself - do you currently use Cygwin? Have you found a better way of
> managing packages other than using Cygwin's Setup program?
Yes I use Cygwin, no have not found any other way.
--
regards,
Jakob Eriksson
The wages of sin
is debugging.
-- Ron Jeffries (XP project coach)
Reply to: