Re: any plans/info on 64 bit Delphi compiler ?

You will have to be more specific with what doesn't work or where you get a problem. Kylix 3 requires the glibc compat package as far as I know, and as long as that is installed things should start going better. I run the latest Ubuntu 6.10 and Kylix 3 works fine.

It doesn't run on OpenSUSE 10.2. I've tried (as if I needed to, others had reported earlier that it doesn't).

It runs on quite a few unix environments (FPC at least). Best bet would be to ask in the FPC-Devel mailing list. The last time I worked on Solaris was 7 years ago.

I just checked the website and it seems it doesn't run on Solaris. <sighs>

A while back I was wondering about the same thing - binary compatibility and asked the question. The general answer was that it prevents major new improvements in the API and OS Kernel. Not having to worry about binary compatibility allows them to implement better designs without having to worry about backward compatibility. Also they don't have to spend/waist many hours trying to patch previously outdated API's to work with a new underlying kernel design (like Microsoft, etc)

They took a very different approach with the idea of keeping the OS kernel and API as well designed as possible. Also taking in consideration that most software on Linux comes in source form, it can be patched if needed and recompiled.

Payware doesn't come with source (not IDEs like Kylix, at least). I guess that's a nice thing if you run only OpenSource applications.

The problem is really not that big either. Considering that Kylix 3 is a fairly large application and was release at the time when RedHat 7 and SUSE 8 was the latest releases. That is years ago and it still works on the latest distros!

^--

As for the 100's of distros and desktop environments. Please try not to get confused as to what a distro really is! A distro is just the Linux Kernel + someone's preferred packages and applications. Also if you installed a KDE based disto (like Kubuntu), nothing stops you from still running Gnome applications. I use Ubuntu (I like the selection of packages included and it only ships on a single CD. I don't need 20 editors, 8 Office applications, etc...) which uses the Gnome desktop, but often run KDE apps like Kate (editor) which I think is much better than gedit (gnomes default editor).

A distro also can have different versions of key packages as another one, and that is important. Some distros use a different version of the X server as others (and there were ABI changes between 6.9 and 7.0 that broke drivers and low-level applications). OpenSUSE 10.2 actually uses RC2 of XORG 7.2 and having your hardware support dropped because they use beta software in their distro is bad karma <g> KDE is available for Solaris, on the companion CD (CDE and JDS are the only supported desktops, but it's there for your liking if you want it).

The latest (big name) distros have also come a long way to adhere to the LSB standards, which is making a huge difference for application developers.

You can run LSB-compliant applications on Solaris :)

I'd better stop this discussion as we are way off topic now... ;-)


Yes <g>

--
Nathaniel L. Walker

"The compiler should be your servant, not your
master."

Richard Stallman,
"GNU Coding Standards"
.

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