Subject: Re: "Killer app" From: physadm@phys.canterbury.ac.nz (Andrew McGregor, rm ,ext ) Date: Fri, 21 May 1993 02:06:01 GMT
In article 1th751INNise@senator-bedfellow.MIT.EDU, dthumim@athena.mit.edu (Daniel J Thumim) writes:
>All this talk about developing a WYSIWYG-like WP, maybe with an
>interface to [La]TeX is nice, but it's not a "killer app" that will get
>DOS/windoze users to run linux. They like their Wordperfect or 123 for
>windoze or whatever they have. The "killer app" for linux would be
>something allowing users to run windoze apps... if people can run their
>favorite windoze apps directly under linux/X, then I think that linux
>will become much more attractive to many people. Then others will write
>self-help books about it and pretty X administration utils, etc. 8-)
>
>I saw this wonderful announcement here about how Sun users will be able
>to run MS-Windoze apps on their SPARCs and that the interface standard
>for windoze apps will be open. What does this mean for us?
It means that by getting some documentation from Sun, one could
implement the same thing on linux. This'll have to wait untill they
release it, but that shouldn't be long now. (since their own
implementation is close to shipping)
>
>What I want to know is does this seem possible or feasible, to develop
>an interface for running windoze apps under linux/X? If so, I think
>that should be pursued ASAP.
>
> -- |)an
>
Linux is not so far even from Solaris 2 that there is much obstacle to
doing this. It seems that almost all of the relevant sounding kernel
sevices of Solaris are present in linux, so why not? I think WABI will
be the killer app for Solaris 2 (at the moment we're quite happy with
Solaris 1.3) so surely linux can benefit too.