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Convert Linux to Windows

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Re: Convert Linux to Windows

#101

Post by okanat »

icedchai wrote: post #53
api wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That makes no sense: shipping all dependencies (e.g. shipping a container image) gives perfect binary compatibility on Linux, which is what flatpak/snap/appimage do. True, but sad. The way to achieve compatibility on Linux is to distribute applications in the form of what are essentially tarballs of entire Linux systems. This is the "fuck it" solution. Of course I suppose it's not unusual for Windows stuff to be st…

You could say the same about container images for server apps. (Packaging is hard.)

If Linux userspace had libraries with stable ABI, you could just tar or zip binaries and they would work. You wouldn't need to bundle system layer. This is how you deploy server apps on Windows Server systems. You just unpack and they work.

It is not a packaging problem. It is a system design problem. Linux ecosystem simply isn't nice for binary distribution except the kernel, mostly.

Re: Convert Linux to Windows

#102

Post by asddubs »

cyberax wrote: post #9
mappu wrote: post #6

I think this attitude to the Linux ABI is maybe out of date - with a 20 year old Linux binary, that's only 2005, so it will almost certainly be using glibc (no archaic libc5). Glibc has great backwards compatibility and the binary will work on any glibc distribution today as long as you have all the .so's, same as needing the .dll's on Windows.

There are few issues: 1. GNU libc is an exception in the world of compatibility. 2. You can't just dump a bunch of GTK libraries next to the binary and expect it to work. These libraries often expect very specific file system layouts.

I still run an unmodified GTK2 app from 2012 that I just grabbed a .deb from an ancient debian version, because I don't like the GTK3 version.

Re: Convert Linux to Windows

#103

Post by okanat »

Spivak wrote: post #27
devit wrote: post #5

That makes no sense: shipping all dependencies (e.g. shipping a container image) gives perfect binary compatibility on Linux, which is what flatpak/snap/appimage do. It can also be achieved with static linking and by shipping all needed library and using a shell script loader that sets LD_LIBRARY_PATH. Also glibc (contrary to the author's false claims) and properly designed libraries are backwards compatible, so in p…

glibc really doesn't want to be statically linked so if you go this route your option is to ship another libc. It does work but comes with its own problems— mostly revolving around nss.

And NSS defines how usernames are matched to uids, how DNS works, how localization works and so on. If you're changing libc you need to ship an entire distro as well since it will not use the system libraries of a glibc distro correctly.

Re: Convert Linux to Windows

#104

Post by marticode »

kazinator wrote: post #85

> I can pull down a 20 year old exe and still run it today on Windows. Sure, but for how much longer will Microsoft allow this unsigned ancient binary? Using Linux for runing Windows programs is going to be desperately needed as Microsoft enshittifies Windows going forward.

I really don't see Microsoft blocking unsigned exe. There's just too much old Windows/DOS software out there still in use, sometimes running critical infrastructure.

Re: Convert Linux to Windows

#105

Post by nice_byte »

johnea wrote: post #99
pdonis wrote: post #68

To the extent binary distribution is "unstable" on Linux, it's because users aren't expected to just download random binaries from wherever, as is normal on Windows (and Mac, for that matter). Users are expected to either obtain binaries from their distro, or compile them from source. In either case, all of the issues about binary distribution being "unstable" are invisible to users. Which is the point. People who wa…

Thank you very much! I was about to post almost the same thing, so I'll reply to your post instead (and upvote): It's pretty funny to read a critisism of linux s/w distribution along the lines of the dificulty of distributing binaries. This is one of the biggest security vulnerabilities of windows. 3rd parties distributing binary executables. At least in a typical linux distro the binary is built by the distributing…

explain to me why the HELL should i be limited to only running binaries that my distro vendor has deigned to provide, or jump through endless hoops to obtain and build source code (which by the way might not even be obtainable OR buildable). if i have a binary from 5, 10, 15 years ago i should just be able to fucking run it on my fucking computer.

Re: Convert Linux to Windows

#106

Post by okanat »

linguae wrote: post #30
lucasoshiro wrote: post #29

> Imagine we made a new Linux distro. This distro would provide a desktop environment that looks close enough to Windows that a Windows user could use it without training. You could install and run Windows applications exactly as you do on Windows; no extra work needed. Why not use ReactOS?

Linux has far greater hardware support than ReactOS does.

Maybe we should fund ReactOS for end-user applications. Win32 is well established and isn't going anywhere. So why not take advantage of Microsoft's API design effort

Re: Convert Linux to Windows

#107

Post by samtheprogram »

Levitating wrote: post #83

The suckless project gave us stali linux, a statically compiled linux distribution. Doesn't static compilation solve quite a few of the problems states here? https://sta.li/

Yes. It’s the same reason AppImage could work — if the licensing allows for the all libraries to be included in the image, because the Linux syscall interface is generally stable.

“We do not break userspace”

Re: Convert Linux to Windows

#109

Post by nice_byte »

James_K wrote: post #88

Java already solved this problem, for the most part. This whole ABI nonsense really grinds my gears. It's essentially just a result of the silly decision to compile software into dubious blobs and ship those to users. You could get rid of an awful lot of malware and massively simplify software distribution if you were to distribute a platform agnostic intermediary representation of source code that preserves enough s…

java classes have "abi". any binary representation of executable code that is supposed to be interacted with by other code necessarily defines an application BINARY interface.

Re: Convert Linux to Windows

#110

Post by scheeseman486 »

pdonis wrote: post #68

To the extent binary distribution is "unstable" on Linux, it's because users aren't expected to just download random binaries from wherever, as is normal on Windows (and Mac, for that matter). Users are expected to either obtain binaries from their distro, or compile them from source. In either case, all of the issues about binary distribution being "unstable" are invisible to users. Which is the point. People who wa…

There are a lot of reasons to avoid Windows outside of package/software management.

Linux has appimage, it's already capable of running "loose" native executables like Windows does. Flatpak, Snap and Docker all break the "distro repository or compile from source" model. The primary method of playing video games is installing Steam and running Windows software inside a container. This purist vision you have of Linux doesn't exist.

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