Linux distribution binary compatibility

Question

Any way to make a binary in a Linux distribution and run it on another distribution with same architecture? Or I should compile and build it on different distributions?

Answer 1

LSB is definitely worth checking out. Though in regards of working with libraries I was most satisfied by this answer here at SO https://stackoverflow.com/questions/1209674/shipping-closed-source-application-for-linux/1242738#1242738 and this detailed treatment of the rpath mechanism http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/notes/rpath.html

Answer 2

How about HTML?

It's cross platform, it's been around forever, and if you consult caniuse, and you know your target environment. It can render any UI I ever dreamt of, and if you're willing to learn javascript, you can approach this from a server programming perspective and a client programming perspective, without switching languages, which comes in handy if you're the one doing both.

It's probably the closest thing we have to a machine lingua france these days, and that is a good thing, because that means there's potentially more pickins for everybody involved.

People don't know that the web browser does most things you would want from a program, including rendering 3D graphics and PGP style encryption.

The biggest benefit I see in the browser as a platform is that everyone's nephew knows how to install a browser on a new computer, and from there it's just a url away, including packaging in some of the stores.

Answer 3

I realize this is a very old question, but it comes up high in search results and this hasn't been mentioned:

CDE is a tool to create portable Linux applications. This tool packages together all needed files (including libraries) by analyzing at run-time. I have used it successfully on command-line tools several times, one example being getting tcpdump to run on a old hardware appliance running a custom distribution. CDE also doesn't require source, it just packages an executable you are able to run.

At one point I had an error running the cde command which was fixed by prepending the command with LD_ASSUME_KERNEL=2.4.1, this might not be necessary in recent versions as it was years back.

Code is also on GitHub: https://github.com/pgbovine/CDE

Answer 4

It works. But it also depends on the version of the shared libraries you use, including libc, libstdc++ which are forced by the compiler version that may differ from distro to distro.

Answer 5

Normally it's ok to use binaries across linux distributions as long as you have the same set of libraries available. You can use 'ldd' to check which libraries are needed by a binary. libc should sure have the same version in the distributions involved.

Answer 6

Enter Linux Standard Base to reduce the differences between individual Linux distributions. See

• http://www.linuxfoundation.org/collaborate/workgroups/lsb
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux_Standard_Base