[ale] OT Windows Requirements in Universities was VM? (addendum: without windows licenses?)

[Jeff Lightner]

If the binary is statically linked *sometimes* it will run so long as
the underlying chipset is the same.  I used to run AT&T i386 UNIX
binaries on top of SCO UNIX without a lot of problem.

 

However despite "portability" some things aren't really.   Just moving
scripts caused me problems if I was doing something like say cutting the
characters from ls -l that gave file name - on one UNIX/Linux they might
start at position 55 and on another they might start at position 58.
(I know awk with $NF would get around this for files without space names
- just using it as an early example of a tiny difference that caused me
problems.)  These tiny differences can cause issues even for scripts so
you can imagine that binaries might have issues.

 

The fact that many (if not most) binaries now are dynamically linked
means you may not have the required libraries to run the binary on
another system even if it has the same chip set. 

 

________________________________

From: ale-bounces at ale.org [mailto:ale-bounces at ale.org] On Behalf Of
To: ale at ale.org
Michael B. Trausch
Sent: Thursday, March 01, 2007 2:33 PM
To: Atlanta Linux Enthusiasts
Subject: Re: [ale] OT Windows Requirements in Universities was VM?
(addendum: without windows licenses?)

 

On Thu, 2007-03-01 at 13:57 -0500, Brian Pitts wrote:



As a political science student at Emory, the only times I've had to use
Windows involved running statistical software. GNU PSPP isn't anywhere
close to duplicating SPSS. The computer science courses (other than the
Java intros) tend to rely on such obscure or out of date software that
it's better just to run it on the Slowlaris lab machines.


Doesn't Linux have a mechanism for running binaries from other Unix and
Unix-like systems, or is that bound to just the processor that they were
built for?

    - Mike


--

Michael B. Trausch 

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Demand Freedom!  Use open and free protocols, standards, and software! 

 

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