Re: WDSC for Linux... -- WDSCI-L

Here's an alternative: IBM could just choose one distro to support - say
Red Hat.

Hmmm... I'd say RedHet is a poor choice. Many years ago, it was popular.Then RedHat split into an open source version called Fedora and acommercial (for pay) version that's still called RedHat. Now you don'tsee too many people running RedHat anymore. A lot switched to Fedora, andI suspect a lot of Fedora users have switched to Ubuntu, since ease of usewas the reason they used RedHat to begin with, and Ubuntu surpassed themin that respect.

However, that's just my impression -- I haven't done any actual researchto come to that conclusion.

If IBM wants to pick just one to support, I'd think Ubuntu would be thefirst choice. Or maybe Debian.

But that would only help with i386 versions of Linux (and not Alpha orPowerPC, etc). And it wouldn't provide any solutions for MacOS or FreeBSDusers... or various other unix-like operating systems.

Even better, if IBM could manage to confine dependancies to libraries
included in the Linux Standard Base, they would be able to support myriad
distros in one shot.  I guess FreeBSD might get left out in this case -
does BSD have something like the LSB?

FreeBSD is an entire distribution, it's not just a kernel like Linux is.The base tools that come with the operating system are developed, testedand supported by the same team of people who develop the kernel, and it'sall distributed as an operating system. Consequently, there's no LSB. Ifyou say you support FreeBSD, then it's implied that you're using the toolsthat come with it. :)

Linux on the other hand is just a kernel developed by a team of people.Then a separate team (Fedora, Slackware, Debian, Ubuntu, RedHat, etc)combines it with the basic tools to make a dsitribution. It's a differentparadigm.

The other BSDs (OpenBSD, NetBSD, DragonflyBSD, MacOS, etc) have a separateteam of people, maintaining a separate kernel and separate userland tools.This is very different from Linux where the same kernel is used indifferent distros. Although the other BSDs may have used code from FreeBSDor one of it's ancestors when they first started out, they're no using thesame codebase. Though, they do share ideas between them... for example,if there's a new network card released, and NetBSD has drivers for it,then the FreeBSD guys might take their code (possibly with modifications)and include it in FreeBSD -- one the advantages of open source!

Anyway... they're all very similar. In almost all cases, a simplere-compile of the Linux sources will work on FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD,etc. There might be a little difference here or there that you have toaccount for, but they're few and far between. If IBM provided the sourcefor WDSC and made it work on Linux, I'd happily make and maintain my ownpatches to let it work on FreeBSD.

But this is all moot since I doubt they'd ever provide the source forWDSC. That leaves me with a Linux binary and running it under some sortof emulation.