“SCO says that it will deliver a Linux-compatible
environment based on the UnixWare kernel by the end of the
year. It’s different to, and way more ambitious than SCO’s
lxrun emulator. Engineers working on the Linux Kernel Personality
claim that it can already host Linux applications with far better
performance results than can be achieved by running the same Linux
software on a native Linux kernel on identical hardware.”
“A semantic minefield awaits anyone who tries to describe this
as ‘Linux running on UnixWare’, as Linux is strictly speaking,
simply the kernel of the free operating system. The Free Software
Foundation is very particular about this, with good justification.
But back to that in a moment.”
“SCO’s Juergen Kienhoefer tells us that by mapping clone
processes directly onto UnixWare’s native threads, huge performance
gains can be realised. “Basically thread creation is about a
thousand times faster than on native Linux,” he said. The
performance boost could particularly benefit applications such as
Domino, according to Kienhoefer. Other gains could be made by using
UnixWare libraries, and he reckons that SETI at home shows a 4x
improvement over native Linux, as it uses UnixWare’s own maths
libraries.”