DARWINE

[sowlerrmgh]

If you don't know about this bit of software then Then look here

Does anyone think this software will ever be able to emulate every bit of windows software?

 

[maxvamp]

it would be nice...

I seriously doubt this will ever be quite as robust as a real Windows installation. I believe this to be true due to the fact that there are literally hundreds of undocumented Windows APIs.

Without knowledge of these APIs, some apps will never run correctly.

Max.

 

[joeconvert]

The challege

The biggest issue is that on linux where WINE enjoys a great deal of success they are able to assume binary platform compatability. Somethign thw Mac will never enjoy due the PowerPC processors. Would be nice, but I don't see major manufacturers recompiling against DARWINE.


But sitll, it is a cool platform for migrating windows only OSS, but then again, not a great deal of killer OSS apps out there that are Windows only.

Darn, starting to sound a bit to slashdotesque at this point, so I'm out.

 

[jimjiminyjim]

You'll also note there's been very little development done in the last months. Students are pressed for time, you know, so if anyone here wants to plug on at it...

 

[Mord]

well it sure as hell will be able to make the few windows apps that ran on the ppc version of windows NT, all two of them.

 

[Mechcozmo]

well it sure as hell will be able to make the few windows apps that ran on the ppc version of windows NT, all two of them.

Hehe. Yeah, Minesweeper. Yay.

Neat program... but will be interesting to see if it really works with Windows apps or not.

 

[MisterMe]

well it sure as hell will be able to make the few windows apps that ran on the ppc version of windows NT, all two of them.

Unlike WINE on Linux x86, DarWINE PPC is an emulator. It uses the open source QEMU emulation engine to execute x86 code.

 

[Mord]

i know, but you could skip the emulation layer all together, however complex that would be to do i dont know.

 

[MisterMe]

i know, but you could skip the emulation layer all together, however complex that would be to do i dont know.

No, you can't. Windows apps are distributed as x86 binaries. You cannot run x86 binaries on PPC computers without emulation. Period.

 

[Mord]

if you read my previous post i mean that to run ppc windows apps as there was a ppc version of windows NT

 

[AdamR01]

well it sure as hell will be able to make the few windows apps that ran on the ppc version of windows NT, all two of them.

Actually, according to one of the developers this is not very easy.
http://sourceforge.net/forum/forum.php?thread_id=1015742&forum_id=237909

"Windows NT/PPC won't run easily on a PPC Big Endian host since they are meant to run only on Little Endian PPC Hosts.*"

 

[Mord]

cant it on a g4 as the g4 (and predecessors) run big and little edian code?

 

[MisterMe]

Actually, according to one of the developers this is not very easy.
http://sourceforge.net/forum/forum.php?thread_id=1015742&forum_id=237909

"Windows NT/PPC won't run easily on a PPC Big Endian host since they are meant to run only on Little Endian PPC Hosts.*"

"won't run easily" has no techical meaning. Windows NT/PPC will either run or it won't run. Windows NT/PPC was meant to run on CHRP computers. The Little Endian PPC computer and the Big Endian PPC computer were the same. CHRP computers were intended to run MacOS, OS/2, Solaris, and Windows NT. The choice of OS was to be the user's.

 

[AdamR01]

cant it on a g4 as the g4 (and predecessors) run big and little edian code?

PowerPC processors can run in either mode. However, for backwards compatibility with the 68k processors (which can only run in big endian) Mac OS runs in Big Endian mode. I'm not an expert in the field but if it were possible to run, the performance penalty would be high.