If you think getting Windows games working in Wine is hard .

David Gerard · Post by **David Gerard** » Thu Mar 27, 2008 9:40 am

... try getting old Linux binaries to work in a current Linux. It's
actually harder.

http://secretlondon.livejournal.com/447659.html

(Windows is all about binary compatibility, but Linux is expressly not
- it's all about *source* compatibility. So old programs are more
likely to work by running the Windows version in Wine.)

- d.

David Gerard · Post by **David Gerard** » Thu Mar 27, 2008 10:17 am

On 27/03/2008, Geoff Streeter <[email protected]> wrote:

I am not as convinced about windows binary compatibility as David. You
can't run 16 bit binaries on any of the 64 bit versions of Windows. This
can be a curse for installers. It also broke when windows 3 was
introduced because windows wouldn't run the old PharLap extended DOS
programs. Or any DOS program that needed ring 0.

I didn't say they were perfect and didn't eventually drop old
interfaces

But they really do work very hard at backward
compatibility - see Raymond Chen's blog "The Old New Thing":

http://blogs.msdn.com/oldnewthing/

It's absolutely fascinating reading for anyone wondering why Windows
and the Win32 API do some of the things they do, and what they need to
do to get old apps working (and why the MSDN description of the
interface is far from the whole story).

- d.

Paul Johnson · Post by **Paul Johnson** » Thu Mar 27, 2008 3:17 pm

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On Thursday 27 March 2008 07:39:22 am David Gerard wrote:

... try getting old Linux binaries to work in a current Linux. It's
actually harder.

http://secretlondon.livejournal.com/447659.html

(Windows is all about binary compatibility, but Linux is expressly not
- it's all about *source* compatibility. So old programs are more
likely to work by running the Windows version in Wine.)

Assuming you don't have the source. If you have the source, odds are you
go ./configure then make whatever, grab some coffee and hopefully all went
well and compiled by the time you get back...

- --
Paul Johnson
[email protected]
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David Gerard · Post by **David Gerard** » Thu Mar 27, 2008 4:29 pm

On 27/03/2008, Paul Johnson <[email protected]> wrote:

On Thursday 27 March 2008 07:39:22 am David Gerard wrote:

... try getting old Linux binaries to work in a current Linux. It's
actually harder.
(Windows is all about binary compatibility, but Linux is expressly not
- it's all about *source* compatibility. So old programs are more
likely to work by running the Windows version in Wine.)

Assuming you don't have the source. If you have the source, odds are you
go ./configure then make whatever, grab some coffee and hopefully all went
well and compiled by the time you get back...

Yeah, I mean of course proprietary binaries. Bad things.

(If there were more of them there would probably be Linux
compatibility layers for Linux. Much as FreeBSD does binary
compatibility with various previous versions of FreeBSD.)

- d.

oiaohm · Post by **oiaohm** » Sat Mar 29, 2008 7:03 am

David Gerard

... try getting old Linux binaries to work in a current Linux. It's
actually harder.

Really depends on how, distrobution and application. If you have a openvz kernel not that hard just bulky. With a openvz kernel you just install both versions of Linux.

Linux kernel has binary compatibility with applications. Its the .so files above it that give nice fun issues. Before something like openvz using a chroot to fix was not uncommon.

Now does it have binary compatibility with drivers hell no.

Linux version of dll hell.

_POSIX2_VERSION is just like setting windows version for a application. Except that has far reaching changes. Changes functions in librarys how they react changes what features are available from console tools and so on. Hello binary compatibility this is part of the posix standard.

Section "Extensions"
Option "Composite" "Disable"
EndSection

Nice another application hitting the X11 spec problems around Composite just in a worse way the wine most of the time.

Critical line
http://secretlondon.livejournal.com/447659.html

It now worked from the menu - it didn't need any of the compatibility libraries.

So there was binary compatibility there. I have had far far worse.

Loki installers when they were new would do stupid things as having the application only able to run as root until you corrected permissions. So that being wrong was normal Loki. God of mischief was a good name for that companies installers.

Most fun is not getting old linux binarys to work in Linux. Its getting like other Unix binaries to work in Linux. Yes doable but a nightmare in custom kernel modules.

David Gerard · Post by **David Gerard** » Sat Mar 29, 2008 10:55 am

On 29/03/2008, oiaohm <[email protected]> wrote:

Most fun is not getting old linux binarys to work in Linux. Its getting like other Unix binaries to work in Linux. Yes doable but a nightmare in custom kernel modules.

/me dives for cover

At least 86open.org just decided "everything supports Linux ELF, let's
just declare that the minimum standard" and emulation with syscall
translation and a pile of Red Hat libs works reasonably well in
practice ...

- d.

James Hawkins · Post by **James Hawkins** » Sat Mar 29, 2008 1:13 pm

On Sat, Mar 29, 2008 at 10:55 AM, David Gerard <[email protected]> wrote:

On 29/03/2008, oiaohm <[email protected]> wrote:

Most fun is not getting old linux binarys to work in Linux. Its getting like other Unix binaries to work in Linux. Yes doable but a nightmare in custom kernel modules.
/me dives for cover

At least 86open.org just decided "everything supports Linux ELF, let's
just declare that the minimum standard" and emulation with syscall
translation and a pile of Red Hat libs works reasonably well in
practice ...

People! This is the *Wine User's* mailing list....if you're
conversation doesn't have to do with that, take it off list.

--
James Hawkins