FreeBSD Now Has A Port For CentOS 7 Binary Support

[phoronix]

Phoronix: FreeBSD Now Has A Port For CentOS 7 Binary Support

We've known for a while that FreeBSD has been working on a CentOS 7 compatibility layer while now that work has finally landed in FreeBSD ports...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=FreeBSD-CentOS7-Compat-Layer

[Luke_Wolf]

The TrueOS beta is claiming Linux 2.6.32 compat, which is tracking FreeBSD -CURRENT, still far behind but IIRC should be enough for steam

[ElectricPrism]

The TrueOS beta is claiming Linux 2.6.32 compat, which is tracking FreeBSD -CURRENT, still far behind but IIRC should be enough for steam

I thought it was already confirmed steam runs on FreeBSD, however the problem was no games had sound - has this changed?

[Joe S?rensen]

So now Linux binaries can run on both FreeBSD, TrueOS and Windows X. That's everything but Mac OS.
Does that give us opportunities?

[Luke_Wolf]

I thought it was already confirmed steam runs on FreeBSD, however the problem was no games had sound - has this changed?

Technically the claim for what you're thinking of is that steam works, but FMOD based games have no sound (games using OpenAL or otherwise cross platform audio libraries wouldn't have that issue), for steam from this one repo on Github, I haven't read of anyone trying it though, and I'm not ready to risk my own account to a potentially dodgy source.

[Luke_Wolf]

So now Linux binaries can run on both FreeBSD, TrueOS and Windows X. That's everything but Mac OS.
Does that give us opportunities?

FreeBSD has been able to run Linux binaries for a long time, the problem is it's Linux compat support was maintained as good enough to support Flash and Skype but nothing else really, because everything else that people cared about that targeted Linux used to be open source, now Linux has Steam, and of course FreeBSD users want that, so it's now slowly being brought up to current.

As to it creating an opportunity, the answer is flatly no, Windows developers aren't going to suddenly start targeting the Linux compat layer for Windows programs because Windows has the dominant market position, and compatibility primarily helps those that aren't in the dominant position, That said, it may in theory make making cross platform software easier by allowing Windows developers to target Linux from Windows.

[unixfan2001]

Windows developers aren't going to suddenly start targeting the Linux compat layer for Windows programs.

Depends.

If that compat layer means Windows development becomes less of a cluster fuck and more standards adhering, I would target it in a heartbeat (provided my employer ever gets rid of its paranoia against Windows 10).

That being said, Windows developers are going to slowly die off eventually. Either because Microsoft stops putting more resources into proprietary solutions (that's happening already) or because people get fed up enough, finally punch their bosses in the groin and leave their shitty Windows shops or because an aneurysm takes them all out (the more 3rd party emulation shit you have to layer on top of the existing userland to get anything done, the more likely the latter gets).

Totally off-topic, but I've been spending the last eight hours figuring out how to build libgit2 and git2go on Windows.
On my trusty Ubuntu and RedHat systems, the whole process took me a whooping five minutes (download time included).

Whoever says Windows is easier than *nix obviously never had the need to build a library (static or otherwise) on that clusterfuck of an OS.

[Luke_Wolf]

Depends.

If that compat layer means Windows development becomes less of a cluster fuck and more standards adhering, I would target it in a heartbeat (provided my employer ever gets rid of its paranoia against Windows 10).

That being said, Windows developers are going to slowly die off eventually. Either because Microsoft stops putting more resources into proprietary solutions (that's happening already) or because people get fed up enough, finally punch their bosses in the groin and leave their shitty Windows shops or because an aneurysm takes them all out (the more 3rd party emulation shit you have to layer on top of the existing userland to get anything done, the more likely the latter gets).

Totally off-topic, but I've been spending the last eight hours figuring out how to build libgit2 and git2go on Windows.
On my trusty Ubuntu and RedHat systems, the whole process took me a whooping five minutes (download time included).

Whoever says Windows is easier than *nix obviously never had the need to build a library (static or otherwise) on that clusterfuck of an OS.

Well... So here's the thing, until Windows becomes compatible with X11 or more likely Wayland developers are not going to build GUI applications as Linux Applications for Windows, which leaves server applications where Linux is already dominant and command line applications which Windows Developers have basically never targeted in the first place. Now... that said... developers can (and indeed were capable of doing so before the linux compat) target Qt, SDL, and other crossplatform APIs and then get Linux compat for free as long as they build the binaries for it, which the compat layer should help with.

Now this all said you do bring up an interesting point, if having the linux compat makes developers lives easier, they're more likely to eventually experiment with the real thing and begin to advocate for shifting development over, so that could potentially be a win there, however on the flip side they have to be willing to try to use it in the first place... which... isn't a guarantee all things considered.

[Luke_Wolf]

Ghetto Addition:

So one other thought I had, do you know if Linux executables can be run from the windows context? like so for example can I for example call the linux gcc from a windows cmd context, or let's say I install QtCreator, can I then add the linux gcc executable to the compiler list and have it work? If I have time I'll look into this but if that's yes then that adds it's own interesting dynamic...

[You-]

In the future, when runtimes are more readily available, supporting them may make it easier for other operating systems to be compatible.