( ESNUG 308 Item 8 ) ---------------------------------------------- [1/20/99]
From: "Charles H Small" <charles.small@worldnet.att.net>
Subject: How To Run UNIX & NT Programs Simultaneously On One PC Or Server
John,
Lost in the welter of "Windows vs. NT" punditry from the trade press is the
little recognized fact that UNIX is a subset of NT. Bill Gates hired a
group of professional operating system writers away from DEC and set them to
work to craft a real OS with lots of interfaces. NT comes with, naturally,
WIN16 and WIN32 interfaces as well as OS/2 (bad guess there). But there is
also a POSIX interface -- designed right in to run UNIX programs compiled as
native PC code. The POSIX interface has been in NT from day one.
Not wanting to appear to be competing with itself, Microsoft licensed the
source code to Interix (http://www.interix.com) a couple of years ago. With
Interix's software you can run both NT and UNIX programs simultaneously on
the same PC or server. If you are familiar with how a DOS window pops up in
Windows, then you can envision exactly what a UNIX window would look like.
The latest development from Interix is a method for encapsulating a UNIX
program in a Microsoft COM wrapper, making it a dll that any Windows program
or script can call.
InteriX is NOT a UNIX emulator.
I would assume that when Intel is ready with the 64-bit processors,
Microsoft will have added a WIN64 interface. Whether or not Interix
software will be upgraded to run 64-bit UNIX program I can't say.
- Charles H Small
Senior Technical Editor
Electronic Systems Design & Technology Magazine San Jose, CA
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