Menu
If a particular piece of software is made to be run on one platform and the programmer/company/whatever wants to port it to the other, what exactly is done? I mean, do they just rewrite linux or windows-specific references to the equivalent in the other? Or is an entire rewrite necessary?
Just trying to understand what makes it so cost-prohibitive that so many major vendors don't port their software to Linux (specifically thinking about Adobe)
Thanks
975
Is it quite difficult to port a game from Windows to Linux? It depends on how the game was written. If it was written using Windows API and DirectX directly it will be quite difficult and a lot of work.
To run a Linux program on Windows, you have these options: Run the program as-is on the Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL). In WSL your program executes directly on the machine hardware, not in a virtual machine.
Perhaps the easiest way to use Linux on Windows is with WSL, AKA Windows Subsystem for Linux. WSL is a framework that Microsoft has created for Windows 10 and 11 that allows users to run everything from Ubuntu to OpenSUSE and virtually every other Linux OS right on the Windows desktop.
this is the point of a cross-platform toolkit like qt or gtk, they provide a platform-agnostic API, which delegates to whichever platform the program is compiled for.
some companies don't use such a toolkit, and write their own (for whatever reason - could well be optimisation-related), meaning they can't just recompile their code for another os.
98
If you love us? You can donate to us via Paypal or buy me a coffee so we can maintain and grow! Thank you!
Donate Us With
