Re: Bootcamp

On Thu, 3 Jul 2025 10:56:26 -0400, Arne Vajhøj wrote:

5) The idea of emulating one OS on another OS is questionable
    in itself. It is not that difficult to achieve 90-95%
    compatibility. But 100% compatibility is very hard. Because
    the core OS design tend to spill over into
    userland semantics. It is always tricky to emulate *nix
    on VMS and it would be be tricky to emulate VMS on *nix.

It was always tricky to emulate *nix on proprietary OSes. But emulating
proprietary OSes on Linux does actually work a lot better. Look at WINE,
which has progressed to the point where it can be the basis of a
successful shipping product (the Steam Deck) that lets users run Windows
games without Windows. That works so well, it puts true Windows-based
handheld competitors in the shade.

That has never been done before. And it’s got to be a more difficult job
than emulating VMS, with its much simpler APIs.

Getting DCL, image activation, process permanent files,
subprocesses, logicals and symbols working 100% compatible on a
Linux kernel would not be easy. A lot hang on the 4 mode design and
DCL being in S.

We don’t need to emulate the internals of DCL. We just need to be able to
run users’ command procedures.