[Coco] coco4 / Linux

[Joel Ewy]

On 02/12/2014 07:27 PM, Glen VanDenBiggelaar wrote:
> Wow
> Linux? Really?
> I am really floored by every time someone starts talking OS's, that some Linux person just has to jump in and state that for everything Linux is the only viable solution. I thought that these coco discussions would be  exempt from this, but I have been proven wrong! Again!
> (Just yesterday I posted an article on the death of XP in April, and the first comment was about the lack of Linux being mentioned in it).
> I hate to burst the Linux fanboys bubbles, but the ONLY people that care about Linux is Linux people!
> Not everything needs to run on it.

Because it is distributed under an Open Source license, a Linux kernel 
could legally be shipped with an emulator and a computer, for a 
ready-made turnkey solution at no extra cost.  It can also be stripped 
down to the barest essentials, so the emulator is essentially the only 
thing running on the system.  I guess you could do the same with 
FreeDOS, or maybe something like ReactOS, if it is at the stage where it 
can support something like an emulated Next-Gen CoCo.  But the Linux 
kernel is more mature, capable, and featureful than those.  Because of 
the way Microsoft chooses to license MS-Windows, you simply cannot do 
the same thing under that platform.  That's not a matter of fanboy hype, 
just the reality of the situation.  If you make an emulator run under 
Linux you can run it anywhere without having to license a copy of 
Windows, which would make no sense at all if your aim is a dedicated 
CoCo emulator.  You can put it on a Live CD or USB memory stick and boot 
it on your Windows machine without wiping out Windows.  You don't even 
need to be limited to a certain CPU platform if you target a Linux 
kernel. A recompile lets you run on ARM, PowerPC, or other 
architectures. Linux gives you freedom you simply don't have with a 
Windows-only application.  Not bashing Windows.  Every day I help 
clients who are trying to use it.  But in doing so, I can see very 
clearly not only its benefits, but also its limitations.  If you want to 
distribute an emulator as an embedded or turnkey system, I can't see how 
it would make any kind of sense to write it for MS-Windows.  That's not 
to say that a Windows-based emulator isn't also a fine idea.  Though we 
do have a few of those already.

JCE

> Sorry for the rant, but I have been h
> Sent from my iPhone
>
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