Hamby wrote on 2021-02-11, 21:32:
Would it make it possible to compile old Linux/Unix source code to run under Windows NT/2000/XP?
I have to admit, it would be kind of amusing to play some of the old freeware Linux games natively under Windows...
Yeah, that's a big part of what it's for! Games might be a problem though. If they run on the console, they probably use SVGALib, which I'm pretty sure SFU doesn't provide an implementation of - SVGALib is more of a Linux and FreeBSD thing than a standard "Unix" thing. If the games are X11 ones, they might build but note that you'll need to get an X server because there isn't one included. I don't know if SFU would provide support for X extensions like OpenGL though.
And Jo22 is right, coLinux was really nice! It was so much faster than running a VM. It filled a different role though, I think: it was for actually running Linux directly under Windows, whereas SFU provides a few Unix-style tools and the ability to more easily rebuild Unix source code on Windows. With coLinux you didn't need to rebuild anything, but it wasn't really integrated into Windows, whereas with SFU you need to rebuild things but you end up with tools running natively in Windows.