FreeVMS

On Thu, 3 Jan 2002, Ron Hudson wrote: Also: speed. Sorry, but the new Dual ath 1.4G I hope to get with Xmas money would be tons faster than and old VAX 8650. Not as fun to play with the little computer, but much easier to carry without a pallet mover. I have not-too-much experince with VMS, so bear with me, but wouldn't it be possible to do one of the following options: 1) Stick an 'emulation' user-mode shell on top of some free *nix 2) Take a stock free *nix kernel, and modify it to work more like VMS. While #1 (should) be rather trivial if all the catches fit into the kernel hooks (and a bit of coersion for the stranger details), #2 still saves quite a bit of work by having a framework of usable device drivers, kernel scheduler, vm, memory manangement, etc. etc. etc. Changing around the kernel's API just enuf to work wouldn't be too much of a problem. Leaving the essentials in place could mean compatibility with some existing *nix software even, and things like VMWare which would help greatly with development efforts. Of course, the problem is deciding what ONE kernel to use (prolly BSD or Linux 2.??), and how to trim down the kernel to a small set of drivers for testing it. Well, as a student, and long-time programmer (compared to other 20yr olds), that's my $0.02. --Pat