Mac OS X/Darwin port of Wine

[Jim White]

Mike Hearn wrote:
>         Supposedly Mac OS X already has the largest installed base of
>         any single *nix distribution...
> 
> Actually, according to figures from Apple and IDC (guess which is more
> neutral) desktop Linux has at least double and possibly quadruple the
> installed userbase of MacOS X. I have pointed this out several times
> when people make statements such as that, and have yet to be refuted,
> ...

Do you have any references for those statistics?  The thing that IDC 
just said is that they expect new Linux desktop shipments to pass new 
Mac OS X shipments within the next year or two.  Even if that comes to 
pass (which I very much doubt), that doesn't directly address the 
installed base size.

http://www.macobserver.com/columns/thebackpage/2003/20030103.shtml

> As CPU emulation would be one
> of the trickier parts, I'd definately go with the advice to start by
> making x86 binaries work on Linux/PPC, as that keeps the number of
> things that could interfere to a minimum.

I'm reconsidering how to get started now.  I spent a fair bit of the 
weekend trying to get Darwin/X86 running and it doesn't look promising. 
  Not only do I need to get a different motherboard but it sounds like 
there are siginificant issues with bugs and performance.

I'm quite unlikely to set up a Linux/PPC box myself, although I am 
*very* interested in hearing from folks working on Wine for *any* PPC 
OS.  And this does seem like a promising area for Linux/PPC folk as I'm 
sure there would a fair bit of interest in being able to run Linux/X86 
binaries (which would be cool with miscellaneous binary support).

I have been interested in ways to have Linux compatibility on Mac OS X 
(it is a microkernel system after all), so I will spend a little time 
investigating that.  But now (unless Darwin/X86 things improve quickly, 
which I doubt) the most likely way forward for me will be to tackle the 
problem directly with Mac OS X.

Jim