Date: 6 Feb 1992 15:37:55-GMT
To: djgpp <@uknet.ac.uk:djgpp AT sun DOT soe DOT clarkson DOT edu>
Subject: Re: All this talk about fully-featured DJGPP
From: Andrew Haylett (GEC-Marconi Research Centre) <ajh AT gec-mrc DOT co DOT uk>
Status: O

[In the message entitled "All this talk about fully-featured DJGPP" on Feb  6,
 Kingsley Kerce writes:]

> I'm grateful to Delorie and all who made DJGPP possible -- it's been a
> lifesaver.  But is it not time for the excellent programmers involved
> to concentrate their efforts on assisting in the development of a
> desirable OS, for instance the GNU OS?  How about this 386 BSD whose
> articles have appeared in Dr. Dobbs?  Why waste time hacking on top of
> MS-DOS?!
> 
> If we can't wait for GNU OS, etc. then there must be some way to bring
> the cost of the commercial UNIXes down far enough so that even a
> student could afford one of them.  Isn't the demand for these UNIXes
> high enough to bring the costs down?
 
Well, some of you guys probably know about Linux, the free Unix-clone for
386's developed by Linus Torvalds and others. Designed for students to aid
their instruction and their pockets :-) It has gcc 1.40, bison, yacc, make and
GNU emacs ported to it already, and is a very good, stable development
platform; POSIX-compatible library/system calls, etc. No g++ as yet, but that
should come with gcc 2.0. Read alt.os.linux for more, or mail to
linux-activists-request%news-digests.mit.edu to get on yet another mailing
list.

djgpp has been a lifesaver for me too. But given that I can't write code for
non-386 users with it, it really is more of a platform for playing around with
interesting C/C++ source, and thus it's no big deal to abandon DOS for such
purposes and use a free Unix with all its benefits.

----
Andrew Haylett       | Inet: ajh AT gec-mrc DOT co DOT uk   | Fax: +44 245 75244
GEC-Marconi Research | Tel: +44 245 73331 x.3283 | Telex: 995016 GECRES G