Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!seismo!sundc!pitstop!sun!amdcad!ames!hao!gatech!bloom-beacon!bu-cs!madd
From: madd@bu-cs.BU.EDU (Jim Frost)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc
Subject: Re: OS/2 under UNIX futures
Message-ID: <20246@bu-cs.BU.EDU>
Date: 28 Feb 88 19:29:59 GMT
References: <340004@hpsrli.HP.COM>
Reply-To: madd@bu-it.bu.edu (Jim Frost)
Followup-To: comp.sys.ibm.pc
Organization: Boston University Distributed Systems Group
Lines: 18

In article <340004@hpsrli.HP.COM> waynec@hpsrli.HP.COM (Wayne Cannon) writes:
>Has anyone heard anything about the future of OS/2 running under
>UNIX/XENIX?  My concern is the long term viability of a strategy based
>on VP/ix or DOS Merge as OS/2 becomes more prevalent.

The way it's designed (emulation box, etc), I would doubt very much
that OS/2 would ever run under UNIX except on an emulated machine.

The reverse may not be true, however.  OS/2 makes a lot of assumptions
about the hardware of your system; most UNIX's do not.  I don't
believe it would be that hard to patch a UNIX kernel to use OS/2 calls
instead of its own.  Of course you'd loose performance with the
in-between steps, but you'd get the double OS that you're looking for.
I would imagine that the UNIX system call interface would need
redefining, so you'd have to recompile everything with new libraries.

jim frost
madd@bu-it.bu.edu