Mike Hearn wrote:
Supposedly Mac OS X already has the largest installed base of any single *nix distribution...Actually, according to figures from Apple and IDC (guess which is more neutral) desktop Linux has at least double and possibly quadruple the installed userbase of MacOS X. I have pointed this out several times when people make statements such as that, and have yet to be refuted, ...
Do you have any references for those statistics? The thing that IDC just said is that they expect new Linux desktop shipments to pass new Mac OS X shipments within the next year or two. Even if that comes to pass (which I very much doubt), that doesn't directly address the installed base size.
http://www.macobserver.com/columns/thebackpage/2003/20030103.shtml
As CPU emulation would be one of the trickier parts, I'd definately go with the advice to start by making x86 binaries work on Linux/PPC, as that keeps the number of things that could interfere to a minimum.
I'm reconsidering how to get started now. I spent a fair bit of the weekend trying to get Darwin/X86 running and it doesn't look promising. Not only do I need to get a different motherboard but it sounds like there are siginificant issues with bugs and performance.
I'm quite unlikely to set up a Linux/PPC box myself, although I am *very* interested in hearing from folks working on Wine for *any* PPC OS. And this does seem like a promising area for Linux/PPC folk as I'm sure there would a fair bit of interest in being able to run Linux/X86 binaries (which would be cool with miscellaneous binary support).
I have been interested in ways to have Linux compatibility on Mac OS X (it is a microkernel system after all), so I will spend a little time investigating that. But now (unless Darwin/X86 things improve quickly, which I doubt) the most likely way forward for me will be to tackle the problem directly with Mac OS X.
Jim