Michael Jung schrieb:
On Friday 16 December 2005 10:49, Peter Beutner wrote:
Wine is _not_ just a different toolkit. Just look at all the "nasty" stuff wine has to do to emulate the windows process environment.
I guess in the long term a project like wine, if successfull, doesn't have to live with the restrictions put up by the environment. If I understand correctly, the reason we have to do this nasty stuff, is because the kernel is missing functionality, which the NT kernel provides. Linus has stated that he thinks the Wine project is pivotal for Linux success as a desktop operation system. The kernel guys have been pretty cooperative before and I'm sure if we tell them what we need, or even better help out implementing it, Wine could be just another toolkit, perfectly well integrated _with_ the Linux environment.
Let's just look at the problem with the memory layout. Wine relies on the possibility to load certain codes at fixed addresses as this is how it works under windows. Linux choose exact the opposite direction, i.e. try to ensure that libraries are loaded at random places in the memory. This is not a missing feature it is a complete different design decision. And I seriously doubt that the kernel/or glibc guys will import the security flaw from windows to always load code at fixed positions. So wine will have to live forever with it's custom preloader hack to emulate the windows process environment.
As long as wine doesn't break. And we all have seen how easy wine gets messed up when something in underlying linux software changes. May it be the kernel or X.
"Success is measured by your ability to maintain enthusiasm between failures."
- Sir Winston Churchill
But this only applies to wine, not to software companies trying to make money with their work? Is it too much to expect that enthusiasm from them? Or how should I interpret this?
Bye,