>
> On the other hand, commercial apps usually have very precise instructions
> as to what one should do. If you're a little creative you can generally
> break the rules to get these to run on FreeBSD. For instance, I installed
> StarOffice by timing the length of the binary first-stage installer (which
> is broken on my FreeBSD system), running it again and stopping it just
> before it finishes, and then finding the newly-extracted second-stage
> installer in the /tmp directory. (I'm pretty sure the installer works
> better on newer versions of FreeBSD).
Yes, making StarOffice work for FreeBSD was a real pain - before FreeBSD
put out the port that is. Your example above also demonstrates how difficult
it is sometimes to get Linux related stuff to work on FreeBSD.
I believe even to make netscape plugins (for Linux) work, you need to use the
linux version of netscape - not the FreeBSD one (at least this used to be true
some time back). All these nifty things really scare any new users away from
FreeBSD.
>
> I think the answer is more to convince application vendors to go the extra
> inch and write a back-up install script that's a little more portable than
> their fancy GUI things, rather than asking the kernel hackers to go the
> extra mile to ensure every Linux program works perfectly.
>
Which clearly is an impossible job. Much easier to convince one party than
to convince the one million vendors out there. :)
But seriously, I think the problem can be fixed with a more transparent
interface for Linux programs. Rather than requiring Linux libraries to be put
in /compat/linux, it would be much easier if everything could be put in
/usr/lib. Which probably means having the SAME interface as Linux.
- Mohit
To Unsubscribe: send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message
