From: "Christopher J. Shaulis" <cjs@netcom.com>
Date: Sun, 8 Oct 95 14:34:18 PDT
To: rjc@clark.net (Ray Cromwell)
Subject: Re: [NOISE] Caution! Netscape 2.0 and Linux
In-Reply-To: <199510082054.QAA04516@clark.net>
Message-ID: <199510082024.QAA00698@hoopsnake.cjs.net>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text


> > Just a warning to steer clear of Netscape 2.0 on Linux. It can't
> > resolve FQDNs, its distributed as a staticly linked a.out binary
> > *AGAIN*, and I'm hearing lots of reports sitting here on IRC that it
> 
>    It was released as a dynamically linked binary first, however
> gazillions of Linux users who didn't purchase Motif (and hence could not
> run Netscape 2.0 since it uses Motif), complained, and Netscape
> put up a statically linked version immediately.

Releaseing an a.out binary without motif staticly linked is a dumb
idea. There were approximately a dozen vendors of Motif for Linux,
however none of their libraries were compatible as they could not
afree on where the library should reside in memory and how much space
to allocate for future additions to the libraries.

Thats why the linux developers switched to ELF format binaries. Under
ELF all symbol names are resolved at run-time so one man's motif will
work just fine for everyone elf. 

Normally I would suggest that someone should drop the good people at
netscape a hint that you can link Motif staticly without linking all
of the X11 libraries staticly as well, except they are still producing
a.out bins and since nobody has a.out libraries any more, making one
dynamicly linked wouldn't do anyone any good.

> > that there is no java support yet for Linux, and the Java support in
> > the Sun/Windows version of netscape is based on the new (and
> > imcompatible with earlier versions) beta version of Java which sun
> > pimped out to Netscape and won't release the source code too.
> 
>    No, the Java in Netscape 2.0 is Java BETA. The Java used in
> earlier versions was Java Alpha, and Sun explicitly said that
> the class hierarchy *would* change. The Java used in Netscape 2.0
> is the same Java you get in SunSoft's Java development environment.

I said it first, but you said it better. Netscape uses the Beta Java
stuff, which is totally incomptible with the Alpha Java stuff. Nobody
has the Beta java stuff except for Netscape because sun is refusing to
release it to anyone else for the moment -- that means you can't get
it at sun's site.

Christopher