Re: [9fans] Ugly Q, I admit

["peter a. cejchan" <pac@cejchan.gli.cas.cz>]

rsc@plan9.bell-labs.com (Russ Cox) wrote in message news:<5b604999e828279a652aed42cd7ca87d@plan9.bell-labs.com>...
> > would it be easy/hard/impossible to write a linux emulator for
> > Plan9? (however I don't like to spoil plan9 with such things, I
> > still have a plethora of linux prgs whose authors don't like to
> > release sources... sigh. (windoze deleted 4+ yrs ago, my linux disk
> > sleeps silently in my bookshelf... don't like to bring it into life
> > more frequently than absolutely necessary))
>
> Writing a program that runs the binaries but
> intercepts the system calls and handles them itself
> is easy.  I did this a few years ago.  The only wart
> in my emulator is that Plan 9's lack of mmap makes
> loading programs a little clumsier than it might be.
> But I can run hello world, both statically and dynamically
> linked.
>
> The real problem is what to do at that point.
> Any substantial program depends on other context,
> like having an X11 server, or a cursor-addressed
> terminal.  Running things like Wine require kernel
> support that we just don't have.
>
> In the end, it's not clear to me that it would be much
> easier or more convenient than just running a Linux
> system.
>
> What kind of programs did you have in mind?
>
> Russ

Tru "black" commandline ones (perhaps with interaction like 1, 2, Y, N...),
no X11 or .so

thanks,
++pac.