Re: win4lin-like porting of win98 to xen?

From: Mikhail Ramendik <mr@ramendik.ru>
To: Avery Pennarun <apenwarr@nit.ca>
Cc: xen-devel@lists.sourceforge.net
Subject: Re: win4lin-like porting of win98 to xen?
Date: Mon, 11 Oct 2004 13:05:59 +0400	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <1097485559.3234.11.camel@localhost.localdomain> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <20041011010303.GD11053@worldvisions.ca>

Avery Pennarun wrote:

> A free win4lin (ie. rewriting all those drivers) would be a *massive* amount
> of work.  Fun, but a lot of work.  And it gets more and more obsolete each
> day.  Lots of stuff still runs under win98, but it's certainly not a target
> platform for modern developers.

Actually I thought that, perhaps, much of the work from the WinXP port
could be adapted to a Win98 snap-in port? 

(As I understand, the WinXP structure is so different that a snap-in
port for it without breaking some MS license would be impossible.
Otherwise you'd have done it already ;).

The main idea behind any win9x port is end-user value. ReactOS is an
attempt to recreate the Win32 API, like Wine (but with a different
method). Wine's main problem from the user side is the presence of
various "quirks", minor differences between its implementation and the
Microsoft one; they cause applications to misbehave strangely. 

ReactOS might have the same problem, and thus, its end-user value, under
Xen or alone, might be significantly less than that of Win4Lin (or a Xen
XP, if that were available to the users).

Of course I understand that for end-user value alone, the presence of a
proprietary solution is sufficient. And, Win98 support is indeed getting
obsolete. 

So the only thing that Xen would get from this kind of support would be
an expanded user base. Not a "first-of-a-kind" value, not technical
advantage, only user adoption.

The only people qualified to decide whether this is needed are those who
know how hard it is - i.e. what actually is in the WinXP port and how
easy would it be to move it to win98.

Yours, Mikhail Ramendik

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