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Run Linux apps on other platforms with LINA

Run Linux apps on other platforms with LINA

Posted Sep 27, 2007 13:09 UTC (Thu) by scarabaeus (guest, #7142)
Parent article: Run Linux apps on other platforms with LINA

Hmm, both the article and the website are rather wishy-washy. How does LINA compare to wxWidgets, glib+GTK etc., which also allow cross-platform code development? I get the vague impression that LINA could be a "reverse WINE", i.e. a Linux emulator for Windows/Mac. OTOH, applications somehow need to be prepared for use with LINA. Hint: If you want people to use a tool, explain what the tool does! ;-)


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Run Linux apps on other platforms with LINA

Posted Sep 27, 2007 15:50 UTC (Thu) by graydon (guest, #5009) [Link]

Agreed. If anyone who can actually extract (or happens to know) how this thing is working technically -- their "technology" page is completely unclear -- please post here. It looks curious but I've only got so much time to dig through PR looking for answers.

Run Linux apps on other platforms with LINA

Posted Sep 27, 2007 17:03 UTC (Thu) by IkeTo (subscriber, #2122) [Link] (1 responses)

> I get the vague impression that LINA could be a "reverse WINE", i.e. a
> Linux emulator for Windows/Mac. OTOH, applications somehow need to be
> prepared for use with LINA.

My guess is that it aims to be a "reverse WINE" by implementing the GNOME and KDE library using Windows API, but for the moment they didn't get the time to do so and thus create a "LINA library" which they can quickly implement both in the Linux side and the Windows side. Of course they need a Linux API as well, but that is probably mostly done just using Cygwin.

Run Linux apps on other platforms with LINA

Posted Sep 29, 2007 14:16 UTC (Sat) by tom_a (guest, #44927) [Link]

Article and openlina.org: Plans are underway for support of GUI applications that use Qt and GTK+.

Your guess is wrong. QT is not the KDE library and GTK+ is not the GNOME library.

Run Linux apps on other platforms with LINA

Posted Sep 27, 2007 19:45 UTC (Thu) by amikins (guest, #451) [Link] (2 responses)

In addition to the poor explanation for the mechanisms through which this functions, there's a highly suspicious entry in the FAQ for licensing. Taken at face value, this is indicating that you you use the LINA tools to build something the source for the project must be GPL'd..

Is it taking natively compilable Linux apps and compiling them using a seperate toolset, or must you port the application to their library set first?

If you can compile an unmodified source tree with this toolset, I don't see how they can claim you must distribute your source under the GPL, since it's clearly not a derivitive work at this point. If your application must be ported to the framework first, claiming this is a way of running "Linux" applications seems a little misleading.

I'm a little puzzled.

Run Linux apps on other platforms with LINA

Posted Sep 27, 2007 22:07 UTC (Thu) by moxfyre (guest, #13847) [Link]

I agree. How does it work?

Is LINA like Wine-in-reverse, implementing Linux APIs on Windows? If so, use Cygwin, which basically does just that.

Is it like wxWidgets, implementing one widget API on multiple platforms? If so, why not use wxWidgets already.

If it's something else... well then what is it?

Run Linux apps on other platforms with LINA

Posted Sep 28, 2007 19:16 UTC (Fri) by ewan (guest, #5533) [Link]

The argument would be that the resulting binary would be a derived work,
and you could either distribute it under the GPL, or not at all. If the
original project has a GPL incompatible license then you're stuck
with 'not at all'.

This is essentially the same case that's made for things linked to GPL
libraries as distinct from LGPL libraries.


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