Linked by David Adams on Wed 6th Aug 2008 15:32 UTC
After 10 years of supporting Linux, IBM continues to challenge Microsoft on multiple fronts and aims to push Linux even further into the enterprise. While IBM has competed and partnered with Microsoft over the last two decades, the Microsoft-free PC effort is perhaps its most direct assault yet. "The idea of Microsoft-free personal computing has been in the air for a while," Inna Kuznetsova, director of Linux at IBM, told InternetNews.com. "We're just partnering with Linux distribution vendors and hardware vendors to make it happen."
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Member since:
2005-11-02
Unfortunately, normal desktop apps have to bind to system. For example, they have to use platform libraries to look natively. Or just to draw text.
They don't have to bind to the system, static builds work perfectly well. They will work on any system with a recent libc. OK they will not necessarily match the current users theme they will look perfectly reasonable with a recent default theme for GTK or Qt depending what toolkit was used. There is in fact staticaly built commercial software on the market, for example SoftMaker Office.
Do not forget OpenOffice use to be distributed with a universal Linux binary. The only reason it is now split into an rpm and a deb download is to make it integrate with the two main package management systems. You could perfectly well install the rpm version on Debian/Ubuntu using alien.
Another way to make distribution independent software that runs on Linux is to follow IBM's approach (OK they only certify this for a limited set of distros but it should work on anything) is to write/port your application to the Eclipse Rich Client Platform.