IE For FreeBSD
Moderator writes: "Wouldn't it be nice if Microsoft ported Internet Explorer to FreeBSD? Apparently, someone else thinks so, and set up a petition for Microsoft to port IE to FreeBSD. Hey, I'm no Microsoft lover, but IE is better than Netscape." Hmm. Personally, I'm more of a "xterm -geometry =120x50 -e w3m" man, but to each his own I suppose.
To bad no-one will see this because:
A: BSD threads seem to get about 2 moderator points, total.
B: this is off from the home page.
That being said..
Microsoft didn't really port IE to anything but Windows or Mac; they use MainSoft's Win32 port to port it to Solaris. MainSoft does not support Linux or FreeBSD (last time I checked). Therefore it would take a great deal more work to port.
So it seems unlikely Microsoft is going to go out of their way to support FreeBSD or linux and time soon. The only reason they ported it to Solaris is because MainSoft made it relatively painless for them.
People should petition for MainSoft to port their Win32 layer to other unix's, instead.
-Jon
this is my sig.
I hate to say it ... but this is a good idea.
Netscape is total crap, and Mozilla M15 runs like a dog. And this is on a Dual PIII-500 w/192mb ram !!!
(I'm not even gonna mention how mozilla runs on my P166 Laptop w/32mb ram, except that it took 10 minutes to start!)
I'm really looking forward to improvements in Mozilla, and hopefully by M16/M17 it will be faster and more usable (at least the crashing has gone away), but IE for FreeBSD (and Linux) would be pretty good. ATM it is the only decent browser available.
The chances of this happening, however, is slim. MS apparently refuses to develop software for alternative OS's that run on x86. (Maybe FreeBSD/Alpha, FreeBSD/ppc and FreeBSD/IA64 have a chance...)
D.
You can tell how powerful someone is by the magnitude of the crime they can commit and be able to get away with.
At my old job they had IE for Solaris running on UltraSparc 60's and it was slower than hell. I can't imagine how it would run on my poor little K6-2.
If they want to port it thats fine with me as long as it runs at comparable speeds to the windows version or at least faster/more reliable/less memory than Netscape. I doubt it will ever happen.
Andrew
bsd doesn't suck, it's proven to be better than linux (or else yahoo, hotmail, cdrom, etc... would use linux, and besides the linux and BSD communities would be better off working together than posting flamebait like this). However, I do not wanna see anything MS ported to FreeBSD. That would pollute it too much.
It's a conspiracy!
No, not really. Part of the problem is Netscape won't offer an ELF binary of Netscape for FreeBSD.
Try the Linux Netscape under FreeBSD's Linux ABI Compatibility or try the BSD/OS version.
I've tried the former, and it works great. It's a better choice since you can use all the plugins for Linux then too.
I don't know how well the BSD/OS Netscape runs, but someone's working on getting it into the Ports Collection.
--
My comments and opinions completely reflect those of anyone and anything I am remotely associated with.
The best way to make mozilla move zippily is to compile it yourself. Just download a source tarball, run the build configurator and do it yourself. Strip out all of the debug crap because you don't need it.
--
Eric is chisled like a Greek Godess
marotti.com
The subject of this news item makes it look as though there is something actually happening with IE and BSD. (In fact there isn't and probably will never be.) A better subject line would be "IE for BSD???"
On a side note, a update of how the software is going can be found on http://www.operasoftware.com/linux/ind ex.html
This isn't ment to be flame or anything, its ment to be informitive. It would be nice to see more options available for any OS.
Nobody ever would have got anywhere had we just changed the default password though.