@darryl

What you are describing is not just an OS but an emulator, where software emulates a different processor. That is *very* expensive in terms of CPU load. As I understand it, the “alternative” processors being discussed are generally not very powerful. So I imagine if you tried to emulate x86 on them they apps would run very, very, slowly — to the point of being unusable.

For a normal (non-emulating) OS, while the apps would make system calls, most of the time the apps are executing their own native CPU instructions. The other way what you describe could work is if all of the apps are interpred or run in a vm, as I believe is the case with .NET. But in that case the apps have a performance penalty *regardless* of the CPU they run on.

But for more people, they use applications that run ontop and hook into the OS either by API’s or whatever (abi’s and so on).

Therefore, once you get the OS working on a CPU it will function as the layer for the hardware (ie the REQUIRED binary drivers, for the new hardware) will be handles by the OS.

Once the OS is up, its a trivial matter of running the applications ontop of the OS. If its done correctly you would not even need to re-compile the apps, but mabey you do.

Either way, im sure 95,000 people in MS would be able to work it out and get the code re-compiled quicker than Linus could go through the 5+ Millions lines of Kernel source by himself. !!.

And dont forget! It’s MS who after all runs the show, and if a CPU or a product will not run the friendly and familiar MS software, then they will reject it.

MS will enter the market aka. the Netbook market and people will see the familar Windows desktop and open their cheque books.

After all, the customer is always right, you can tell someone about linux all day, but if they prefer Windows they will use windows.

Until, Linux gets to the stage where is can do everything that MS Windows can do, and offer MORE with little or no worry or hassle in changing over and you’ll win huge market share.
But offer less or the same or similar but different and they stay away like its the plague.

Basing your hopes on a Linux “Lock-in” trick wont work, it did not work for netbooks and it wont work now. Sorry.

John: you make a good point, and I agree that the Linux community lost a major opportunity by resting on its laurels in the netbook market, only to be overtaken by Microsoft without a real fight.

That said, I suspect that if Microsoft were intending to build Windows for ARM anytime in the foreseeable future, we’d already be hearing about it, because the company would want to generate buzz and encourage PC vendors to include Windows in any plans for ARM devices that they might be formulating. Since Microsoft has yet to announce that it’s even thinking about porting Windows to ARM, it’s likely that it has no intention of doing so, at least for the time being. I imagine Redmond wants more assurance that ARM on netbooks is not just a fad before it invests money into an ARM port of Windows.

It’s also hard to know how easy it would be to port Windows to ARM, since we can’t see the source code. Torvalds made the decision in the early 1990s to design the Linux kernel modularly so that it would be easy to port to new architectures; since Microsoft has been so closely tied to x86 since the DOS era, it might be fair to assume that Windows wasn’t designed to be easily ported to new CPUs. That doesn’t mean Microsoft can’t port it to ARM if it wants–it certainly has the resources–but it might take a while.

But as you say, this doesn’t mean Linux should sit around assuming that Windows will never be ported. I very much agree that there should be a plan for taking advantage of this opportunity. But given the radical decentralization of Linux, and the Linux Foundation’s lack of grounding in the real world (as opposed to the Stallman/Raymond world where every end user is an expert programmer and free-software ideologue), I’m doubtful any kind of meaningful plan involving the whole community would develop. Canonical/Novell/Red Hat might be able to pull something off if they tried, however–especially Canonical, since it’s most focused on the desktop, where ARM is most relevant.

The *buntu family is kind of popular