Munich now Open Source

[leech]

Byock just got a job as a *nix/Windows Admin. (well, general IT guy, I would say) Making 45k a year. Not bad, I'd say. Of course we're in Utah.... There are quite a few places around here lookng for Linux guys.

Leech

[runderwo]

I have a lot of fun working for myself. Probably don't make nearly as much as a corporate type, but setting one's own hours and being able to have a brew "on the clock" are pretty good counterbalances, I'd say!

The licensing costs for my OS are paid by contributing patches and package scripts. That works too

[Pace]

Distros? Mandrake, RedHat and SuSe. And Solaris on x86

As for employment, I stuck UNIX on my CV and interest went up massively. However, the supervisors at my work earn ~£17,000 basic, so that's ~$28,200. This is probably the worst paid job that these guys could be doing - however, it is a secure position.

Windows jobs? Even they are hard to get into, if you do not have the requirements you don't get it, if you exceed them they think you'll move on. Fine balance I'm working on getting the requirements (should be MCP pretty soon, and possible SCSA )...

Ho hum, job fun.

[runderwo]

Do you know what certs are worthwhile? A guy I know is trying to find a sysadmin job, but there is a ton of "Linux" and "Solaris" and "Security" certs of all different types, but he has no idea which certs are the best bang-for-the-buck so to speak. Nobody can afford to get them all

I have another friend who had an awesome windows admin job ($30K), and he up and quit in the middle of the late 90's boom over some trifling thing. He has been working $6/hr PC tech since then because he can't find another job -- regrets quitting every day.

[Nowhere]

Regarding emulation and Wine - I have to agree with Gurm and Pace (about what he said in one post).

Emulator is just something than permits you to run software from one architecture on other architecture. And perhaps some see PCs as one architecture, they aren't one IMHO. You have to take into account not only hardware, also system/software. And don't look at the Wine as the only thing that's responsible for running windows apps.
When you do that you'll see that pc+Linux+Wine is an emulator of pc+windows machine - it definetely emulates this architecture (and I mean whole thing, not just hardware or software).
And leech, emulation doesn't necessarily involve using rom/bios of the oryginal.
It involves just using original software - which you're doing on Wine. The technical nuanses doesn't make software an emulator - what it does makes it.
Besides, you wouldn't call software that runs Xbox games on pc an emulator? Or gamecube games on Macs? It's practically the same hardware after all. :P

Why amiga users doesn't argue that the software which permists them running MacOS on Amiga with PowerPC card isn't an emulator? (hey, it's almost the same hardware after all) Why Wine users must?! (catchy name?)

p.s. Gurm, I'm curious (there were times when I was very into emultaion - grom user point of view. Perhaps they'll be back), on what SNES emulators were you working?

[Marshmallowman]

But the whole acronym WINE = wine is not an emulator is just sneaky stuff to vex people. Eg people are just a likely to think it means "WIN E"mulator

Emulation means emulation.
An emulator usually implies that one CPU is pretending to be another CPU...eg nintendo on a PC.

But with WINE, the CPU's are the same, you just have to add support for calling system and comon functions through a compatabilty layer.

If you have do machine code to a machine code conversion/interpetaion its and emulator in the classic sense.

If you have the same CPU, you are just adding a compatabilty layer.

Does java running on a windows machine emulate java on a sun machine....No they run the same java code through a compatabilty layer

[leech]

Exactly, Marshmellow man. Pretty much what I was going to say...

The fact is that to emulate the Mac on a PPC Amiga, you still have to have the Hardware ROMS. Because the older macs (and maybe the newer ones, I have no idea anymore...) used boot roms, just like the Amiga's did. With Wine you need no hardware emulation at all, just a compatibility layer. Even the libwine-twain type parts of it just route the API's to different API's in linux. (in that case it wraps all the calls to SANE.) If anything WINE is like a much bigger version of one of those Glide wrappers that were all trying to make that old 3d API work with cards that weren't made by 3Dfx. No one tried to call them Glide Emulators. Because they didn't actually emulate any hardware. UAE, XSteem, DGen, etc. All have to emulate the Motorola 680x0's. So those are actual Emulators.

You wouldn't call the GTK port of GIMP an emulation would you? It's kind of the same thing, although granted GTK is just a tool kit, and Windows has a huge amount of API calls, but either way, you don't call them emulators. Emulation should only be used to name software that has to emulate some specific hardware. In which Wine does NOT.

Leech

[Nowhere]

Then look at the Wikipedia, with which I think you won't argue (Linux users don't from what I've seen ).

Emulator

Especially this:

An emulator is a piece of computer software that allows certain programs to run on a platform (computer architecture and/or operating system) other than the one they were originally written for. It does this by "emulating", or reproducing, the behavior of one type of computer on another.

Is Wine a software that allows certain programs to run on a platform (operating system) other than the one they were originally written for? YES!
Does Wine do this by reproducing the behavior of one type of computer on another (pc with windows on pc with *nix)? YES!

This is the most basic definition of an emulator - not by describing what it technically does, but what it functionally does.

Later Wikipedia states

Most emulators just emulate a hardware architecture

Most, not all! Wine is the one that does not do this, as you leech wrote.

And of course in spirit of catchy Wine name ("Wine is not an emulator" ) it states later, in emulator list, that Wine is not an emulator - but by doing this, Wikipedia denies the most significant acapit in its own definition of an emulator (and notice that definition for Wine-like programs does not exist - because if you think about it they surely enclose in the definition of emulator!).
And what's the difference anyway that it uses the same x86 cpu? It is mostly transparent to programs in modern operating systems - they do not acces hardware directly. OS is for this - and Wine will not run without an OS underneath it.
And there are emulators that doesn't use original ROMs.

If Linux were build from the ground up to run windows software it would be another story.

[leech]

The thing is that Windows and linux both run on the EXACT same hardware, so there is no 'emulation involved. Wikipedia, having just denied their own definition of it, should be counted as hypocrits and simply ignored.

Leech

[Nowhere]

The way I see it, many emulators have the purpose of emulating architecture, not only hardware.
And don't tell me that all that counts for you to describe computers as the same architecture is only hardware.
Architecture is rather hardware and OS combination.

And in case of Wine we're talking about cpu only I guess, not the whole hardware (I imagine that Wine would run good on graphics/audio card, chipset etc. supported by *nix but not by windows - if such thing would exist of course ).
So is cpu all that counts in considering something the same architecture? (if someone would want it that way, it could be even on some expansion card, like in powerpc amigas!). Of course not.

[Gurm]

The self-denying acronym really pisses me off.

Lame Ain't an MP3 Encoder.

BITE ME.

- Gurm

[Nowhere]

Gurm, I'm still curious, on what SNES emulator were you working?

[Umfriend]

Was PC-DOS an emulator of MS-DOS then, or the other way around? What about DR-DOS etc. I think just trying to obtain compatibility itself does not make something an emulator.

I think some soundcards used to "emulate" soundblasters though. (Don;t know what that means with respect to this argument and too busy to think about it).

My $0.001 worth

[Nowhere]

Umfriend, from my point of view you'd be not mistaken if Linux wouldn't need Wine to run windows software - if it would do this completely natively (search google for ReactOS).

[Umfriend]

So, uhm, if WINE was simpy a standard library (is that what it is called nowadays?) supplied with any Linux distro (trying to use the lingo here, donnow a thing bout Linux) it would run natively and hence not be an emulator? I wonder what "completely natively" acutally means..... Is my PC "emulating" Java?

I'm prolly indgnant, but then, I have a lot of fights with lawyers the past few days (and will have until monday....).... MAN can they be obnoxious!