Linux Installation and "Standalones"

[Francis Nugent Dixon]

Hi from Paris,

Of course Jacqueline is absolutely correct when she
defines "Standalones".  Unfortunately (or fortunately),
many of the people on the forum haven't been around
long enough to make that definition.

A standalone has no operating system, no libraries,
no drivers, no nothing ! You write everything, from the
bootstrap to the peripheral drivers, and you run it by
"booting" a "peripheral unit". I'm sure many of you will
shudder when you realise what that means. When a
standalone program ends, the machine stops, with
nothing on your screen. Operating systems were
invented to launch all the programs, and to remove
the hassle of writing all the common routines. The first
real operating system I can remember was BOS on the
IBM 360/40 in 1965. The first time we saw that, we were
absolutely gobsmacked ! Today, Operating Systems
are like television. Not many people remember what
it was like when we didn't have them !

What most people mean NOW by standalone, in the
Rev community, is a stack which does not need a
launcher (and function libraries) such as Stack Runner.
But even so, you still have all the Operating System
functions behind you to do all the dirty work.

The only standalone programs I use these days are :

1 - Mac OS X
2 - Windows XP

Pause for thought ......

-Francis

"Nothing should ever be done for the first time"

But happily......  it was !