Re: Porting Garmin Software to Linux


<miso@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:1169707658.866820.303170@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx


On Jan 24, 1:26 pm, Don Piven <spamt...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
m...@xxxxxxxxx wrote:

On Jan 23, 7:50 am, "MikeyCarter" <m...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
I'm trying to convince Garmin that there would be a benefit to porting
their map software to linux.

It is really hard to port linux software as binaries, which is the only
way Garmin would do the port. You need to do a build for each
distribution.Not so. Look at, for example, Mozilla's Firefox and
Thunderbird
packages. Those are binary builds that will run on just about any i686
Linux distro. (No guarantees about running i686 binaries on an x86_64
machine, but that should be obvious.) Unless Garmin needs to get cute
and non-standards-compliant with its code, there shouldn't be any reason
why one distribution package shouldn't fit all modern,
standards-conforming distros.


Well, I'm on a AMD 64 X2 platform, so that might be the problem.
However, suse 10.2 runs 32 bit software as well. It contains both
libraries.

Generally, I compile the programs. Maybe I've got a bad habit, but
there are often useful things to select in the configuration.

So what standard allows binaries to run across multiple distributions?

I tried the google earth linux on my suse 10.2, and it crashed the PC.


http://www.linux-foundation.org/en/LSB

I think that the primary problem with Linux support is that there are so
many distributions and although it may be possible to develop an application
that will work on most of them it can be difficult to test and support the
application. Essentially the vendor would have to have test machines set up
for every distribution (and major versions of them) to test the application
and to debug it if a problem is reported. It's just so much easier to only
support Windows (although of course even then there are multiple versions to
support).

And also of course the vendor needs to hire or train it's developers and the
people who install and maintain the test machines for the Linux OS.


.

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