Unix apps on Linux?

techmatt · #1 10th April 2007, 10:58 PM

This may just show off my nonprograming knowhow, but I have see some apps that would be realy cool to have for Linux. However these apps are on unix systems like AIX, Mac, HP-UNIX, and Solaris. Since Linux was based off of Unix would it not be possable to run these apps on a Linux system? I realize they have differant kernels but, did not think that would matter that much.

The main apps I have see is the wireless connection app for MAC. (I can't remember the name know) but the thing was almost perfect. What would it take to run a MAC app on Linux? (or is it even possable?)

brunson · #2 10th April 2007, 11:07 PM

You're using the word "Unix" where you should be using "Posix". Most Posix code will port relatively easily between different flavors of Unix, but when you start looking at GUI software the portability breaks down.

Linux GUI programs are usually written using a set of graphics tools that fall under the broad categories of GTK (Gnome) or QT (KDE), however they can be written in pure X11. Mac OS X applications are linked to proprietary Mac libararies (Quartz), which won't port to anything else. AIX used to be all Motif based, but I believe they've gone more open source since I stopped working with it. Solaris provides a lot of GTK/Gnome libraries and I believe Solaris 10 may even ship with a Gnome desktop.

But then when you add drivers for things like wireless cards underneath the GUIs, that's where you'll really run into problems. If the driver exists for linux, you're golden. If not, you better hope someone's working on it, because there are probably only a few thousand programmers in the world that could whip out a driver and even they would need detailed documentation on the hardware its API.

I guess that's a very long way of saying, probably not, and probably not by someone without experience porting software.

RupertPupkin · #3 11th April 2007, 05:47 AM

Some Mac OSX programs can be compiled and run in Linux, if they use the Cocoa libraries. This has been done for a number of applications, using GNUstep. I run some GNUstep apps (e.g. the Cynthiune music player, the GNUMail mail client) that compile on OSX and Linux. Of course, you'd need the source code for all that.

techmatt · #4 14th April 2007, 09:57 PM

Thank you for your replies and information. It was just somthing that was bugging me, and I though I would ask people that would know. I have now found a wireless config gui software that I realy like called wifi-radar. I had no idea it was even in the reposiories untill now.

If I had any talant as a programer I think I would probly try to port over some apps, but I am not even close to having talant for code.