| From: | Arto Huusko |
| Date: | 22 Sep 2000 at 10:37:45 |
| Subject: | Re: AMIOPEN: Amiga on NetBSD? |
On 22-Syy-00, Juan wrote:
> No way, I think this issue is important. That BSD family of UNIXes lloks
> like an important base for Amiga to reach the server market. It's a place
> where people don't see you, but there are the big players. By the way, why
> don't Linux programs run on BSDs? I thought that, being of the same X breed,
> porting was very easy. Is the API very different? At which layers?
Uh-oh! Why wouldn't Linux programs run on BSD? First of all the programs that
are available in source code form for Linux will almost without exception
compile and run cleanly on *BSD. Some exceptions are, because not all syscalls
are the same, but these are rare...
And besides the program doesn't have to be in source code form. People are
using RealAudio players, StarOffice and NetScape (not mention lots of others)
Linux binary programs on NetBSD without any problems... I guess all the *BSD
emulate Linux in one way or other.
And speaking of the APIs: X is a common API, since it is developed by (was it?)
X.org (and the actual server program by XFree86 for us), not by Linux or something
like that. Regarding X, you can run X based programs even on Classic Amiga Geek
Gadgets. The programs get their system API from the C library, usually, and since
these tend to implement the same interfaces on Linux and *BSD (or was it that the
used C library is the same?) such as ANSI C, POSIX, traditional Unix. Thus, the API
the program sees is almost the same on Linux and *BSD.
The greatest differences are in the kernel, for example device drivers, and
in the organization and managament of the system.
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