Re: [9fans] Opera6, the phantom browser

[Victor Eibelmann <sbin@ts.com.ua>]

> The original Linux port was done by the chip development group in their
> not so copious spare time.  They release binaries only.  Are you
> saying that someone now releases a source version for Linux?  If
> so, that sounds like the way to go.
Yes and no. They have an .o for i386 architecture, and
an OS-dependent layer in open-source. FreeBSD folks ported that -
they grabbed an .o, and rewritten the OS-dependent layer (although it
does not work sometimes when Linux one works, I think it is a buggy
implementation). If there is some way to feed an i386 .o to Plan9
compiler/loader/whatever, or to get a .8 from Agere to work on, that's
the way to go. And I think that it would be much more easier to write the
middle layer (ok, fileserver :) for Plan9 than a device driver for Linux.
Well, and I suppose it will be not fully open-source - it will still have a
.8
in the distribution - I guess Agere will agree with such a distribution,
but not much more.

Also, there is a fully open-source driver, but without signal-processing
code. Just like a kind of soundcard attached to a phone line.

> > I've heard also that Inferno has such driver (commercial CD only).
> News to me.
Well, that's what I've saw somewhere on the net for Inferno 2.0
announce. They stated that they fully support Lucent/Agere
software modem technology, and so on.