Not always convenient/affordable.
There has been (and will be) lots of discussion about the best way to
run "non-native" apps on the one screen. X11 was a darned good answer
to that, except it isn't in MS's interests to support such things so,
one way or another, all the solutions to running Win apps on non-MS
platforms have their shortcomings. What is relevant here is that Linux
can/should have a flexible strategy when it comes to running DOS or
Windows apps... in the general case it should decide on which method
(running it on a remote system, running it in an emulator, using some
sort of attached processor - like MacCharlie did for Macs?, or
whatever) is best for this app on this workstation under the present
load.
I, too, wondered if a dual-processor box could be used in the way
suggested. Given some specialised hardware support it might be
worthwhile, but otherwise the best idea with SMP seems to be, if it has
to be emulated via Wabi/bochs/etc, try to limit emulation to one
processor to avoid sluggishness in the whole system.
> I'd like to propose a different software item.... I'd like to see a
> "compiler" written that reads in a windows application, converts its
> code more or less permanently to linux/X format with suitable widget
> library and device replacements, and writes it out to disk.
I like this idea. There's some scheme like this coming (here?) for
OS/2 but I don't have the URL handy. It might be nice to have
something like an incremental compile where the first time an app runs
the system creates a translated executable as it goes, saving it for
later runs.
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Mark Aitchison, \_ Phone: +64 3 364-2947 home 337-1225
Dept of Physics & Astronomy, </ Fax: +64 3 364-2469 or 364-2999
University of Canterbury, /) E-mail: phys169@csc.canterbury.ac.nz
Christchurch, NEW ZEALAND. (/' www.phys.canterbury.ac.nz/~physmsa
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