Posix Subsystem for ReactOS - Project 2010

[Steven Edwards]

Hello All,
Now that the word is out its time to fill you guys in. Over the past
few months I have been working with a Project called Cooperative Linux.
Cooperative Linux allows you to the Linux kernel as a process under
Windows NT/2K. With CoLinux you can run any linux application under
Windows.

http://www.colinux.org/?section=screenshots

My plan is to work with the CoLinux team to integrate CoLinux in to
Windows and ReactOS as a POSIX subsystem. They are very interested in
working with us on this project and have linked to reactos.com on the
website.

http://www.colinux.org

Currently CoLinux depends on a driver that allows it to use the
hardware MMU. It also currently depends on cygwin to be compiled. The
first steps for developing this for ReactOS and other Win32 hosts will
be to remove the cygwin dependancy.

Thanks
Steven

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[Shachar Shemesh]

Steven Edwards wrote:
> My plan is to work with the CoLinux team to integrate CoLinux in to
> Windows and ReactOS as a POSIX subsystem. They are very interested in
> working with us on this project and have linked to reactos.com on the
> website.

My entire experience with CoLinux has to do with Dan Aloni grabbing me 
at a random hall a few weeks ago and telling me about it (actually - the 
first he did it was about half a year ago, but he really got my 
attention, making me late for a meeting, this time around).

While it's certainly an exiting project, I understood that it was NOT 
based on the Windows subsystem mechanism, but rather hacking your way 
into Windows NT's ring 0 using a device driver. While I'm a great fan of 
"if it works", wouldn't it be nicer, long run, to have a proper 
subsystem of it?

Also, what are you planning on doing with graphic applications? CoLinux 
works by running a X server on the windows machine. That's probably not 
the best solution there is. How is the ReactOS windowing back-end 
implemented?

Shachar

[Steven Edwards]

--- Shachar Shemesh  wrote:
> While it's certainly an exiting project, I understood that it was NOT
>
> based on the Windows subsystem mechanism, but rather hacking your way
>
> into Windows NT's ring 0 using a device driver. While I'm a great fan
> of 
> "if it works", wouldn't it be nicer, long run, to have a proper 
> subsystem of it?

As one of the other comments said the Windows POSIX subsystem model has
some limitations. I would like to bring CoLinux to the point that it
ties in as well to Windows and ReactOS as SFU does.
> Also, what are you planning on doing with graphic applications?
> CoLinux 
> works by running a X server on the windows machine. That's probably
> not 
> the best solution there is. How is the ReactOS windowing back-end 
> implemented?

We are looking at that currently. ReactOS's TCP/IP implemetation is
lacking so running XFree/Cygwin is not a option atm. Once we get TCP/IP
going than any Xserver for Windows should do but I would like to bring
libw11 in to ReactOS and implement a Xserver as a core OS componate.
LibW11 if you dont know about it sits on top of User32/GDI and
translates all of the XLib calls to Win32 calls. I we can make a
faster/lighter Xserver reusing this code.

Thanks
Steven

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