From owner-freebsd-questions Sat Feb 24 15:24:51 2001 Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from front002.cluster1.charter.net (outbound.charter.net [24.216.159.200]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 1309337B491 for ; Sat, 24 Feb 2001 15:24:48 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from glennpj@charter.net) Received: from [24.240.126.32] (HELO gforce.homelan.net) by front002.cluster1.charter.net (CommuniGate Pro SMTP 3.4b8) with ESMTP id 43652793; Sat, 24 Feb 2001 18:24:46 -0500 Received: (from glenn@localhost) by gforce.homelan.net (8.11.2/8.11.2) id f1ONOV678853; Sat, 24 Feb 2001 17:24:31 -0600 (CST) (envelope-from glenn) From: Glenn Johnson Date: Sat, 24 Feb 2001 17:24:25 -0600 To: Duraid Cc: mij@osdn.com, "freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG" Subject: Re: freebsd and kde Message-ID: <20010224172424.A62204@gforce.homelan.net> Mail-Followup-To: glenn@FreeBSD.ORG, Duraid , mij@osdn.com, "freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG" References: <3A97CBB7.97E71F43@home.com> <20010224154639.A73090@guinness.osdn.com> <3A97E38A.7D351B3C@home.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline User-Agent: Mutt/1.2.5i In-Reply-To: <3A97E38A.7D351B3C@home.com>; from latif2221@home.com on Sat, Feb 24, 2001 at 04:38:34PM +0000 Sender: owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG On Sat, Feb 24, 2001 at 04:38:34PM +0000, Duraid wrote: > you mean everything that is compiled from source is 100% compatible > with freebsd? If it is compiled on a FreeBSD system, yes. > then what does it mean writing application for linux? I am not sure what you mean here but it could mean that the main development is done on Linux systems. That does not however mean that the code will not compile and run on other systems. In the case of KDE for instance they try to make the code as portable as possible. There are cases however where software authors, usually companies, only make their Linux version available as a binary. This means they do not provide the source code so that it can not be compiled on other systems. This is the software that you run with the Linux compatibility layer with FreeBSD. > and does freebsd differs from linux only by the kernel, ie it uses the > same libraries and compilers? The kernel is of course different, the C library is different (glibc in Linux). Other libraries may be the same at the source level but of course are compiled for the appropriate system. Note that this is a broad oversimplification. The situation is somewhat similar with the compiler. The C compiler on my FreeBSD system is gcc version 2.95.2 19991024 (release). I guess most Linux distros are using some version of 2.9x but again they are each compiled for the appropriate environment. > then why do they call the applications ports.. doesn't porting an > application mean modifying the source to suite the operating system? Yes. If you look at a typical port in the FreeBSD ports collection you will find patches that are applied to the original source to make necessary changes to get the software to compile and/or run properly on FreeBSD. I believe that if you poke inside of a Linux SRPM file you will find the same situation, patches that are applied against the original source to get it to work properly with that particular distribution. Hope this helps. -- Glenn Johnson glennpj@charter.net To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message