*BSD News Article 25456


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Newsgroups: comp.os.386bsd.development
Path: sserve!newshost.anu.edu.au!munnari.oz.au!sgiblab!swrinde!elroy.jpl.nasa.gov!decwrl!netcomsv!netcom.com!pcbsd
From: pcbsd@netcom.com (PCBSD Development Manager)
Subject: Re: Whats up with the OS/2 port of NetBSD?
Message-ID: <pcbsdCItqKB.ApB@netcom.com>
Organization: NETCOM On-line Communication Services (408 241-9760 guest)
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References: <CIsAFt.Hq0@news2.cis.umn.edu> <2fs77e$oat@sparc10.entropic.com>
Date: Thu, 30 Dec 1993 01:24:10 GMT
Lines: 24

Ken Hornstein (kenh@wrl.epi.com) wrote:
: Um, I'm confused.  How are you going to port an operating system to another
: operating system?  Or am I just being dense?

An operating system is just a set of services available to applications.
(Whereas applications are just a set of services available to users :-)
This is a simplified view of software.

PCBSD is a set of services that extend the capabilities of OS/2 to provide
support for UNIX applications.  PCBSD is mainly an implementation of a 
proprietary kernel that publishes Section 2 calls.  The rest of PCBSD
is the portable C runtime library and UNIX commands.

The Section 2 implementation is such that most of the UNIX programs will
compile and run on OS/2 with no changes to their source code.  Our goal is
to be as closely compatible with NetBSD and BSD4.4 as possible given some
OS/2 limitations.

PCBSD is also evolving to include System 5 support.
-- 


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--  PCBSD Development Manager  --        --  Service Commitment Support  --
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