Patric Dubois writes,

> strange question ?
>
> MPE can't be installed on an x86 computer !
> and Linux or Windows can't be installed on a HP3000 ?
>
> why Lilo in these cases ?

Windows was written to run on the x86 platform, with the exception of NT, which
also runs on Dec's Alpha chip.  It also ran on a MIPS chip, but demand made the
continuance of support on MIPS not viable for Microsoft.

Linux is Open Software, and therefore, anyone can take the source, and port it
to whatever processor will run it.

MPE, on the other hand, is a proprietary operating system, like Windows, which,
is owned and copywritten by Hewlett-Packard.  There are subsystems being placed
in the "open source" arena via Interex's website, but the OS itself is the
property of Hewlett-Packard.  Windows is, of course, owned and copywritten by
Microsoft.  OS/400 is proprietary as well, is copywritten and property of IBM.

This is the difference.  There are no "free distributions" of MPE that I
personally know of, and if there were, the authors may have some problems with
some people who run a certain company in Palo Alto, California.

There is Connectix for the Macintosh, which enable it to run Windows
applications on the Mac platform, but this is not the true Windows operating
system.  OS/2 Warp once also had a Windows emulator albeit this emulator had
its shortcomings.  The difference here is that these are emulators and
translators, and not the operating system itself.  There is no copyright
infringement as they were not out to duplicate and plagarize the OS itself, but
to permit programs from one OS, to run on the other, unchanged, and without a
port.

Hopefully, this explains things a little.  MPE is intellectual property owned
by Hewlett-Packard.  Unix also has an "owner" (depending on the particular
flavour selected - Unix System/V or Berkeley.  This is one reason why POSIX was
developed - to permit applications to be written under one POSIX-compliant OS,
and easily ported to another POSIX-compliant OS, sometimes with merely a
recompile of the application.

Regards,
Joe Geiser