Hello! I'm getting a powerbook soon and my plans so far is to run debian on it (wont be needing the wlan until next year, so I'll hope for someone to reeeallly threaten broadcom for som info about writing drivers for the aiport extreme but in the coming months i wont be needing it .

Now to the probalby dumb question: since this pc uses a risc-processor what software can be compiled on it? My guess is that compiling software (running software in general) is limited to software written for the risc, right? Or can I actually run any linux software on this machine if I play my cards right (meaning getting the compiler set up straight?)

Another example: There is a windows and a linux version of enemy territory, if I install linux on the powerbook will it be able to run the linux version?

Cheers, Klod

You will have to get binaries precompiled for Risc or compile from source using GCC set up to compile for Risc. Also, Enemy Territory might not work because it is an i386 binary and I don't think the source code is available.

Most software isn't really written for a particular processor, although all binaries only execute on the architecture for which they were compiled (and any compatible ones, but most architectures are incompatible with one another). Code written in a high level language such as C or C++ can be compiled on any architecture for which there exists a compiler, so long as the software is written portably (i.e. it sticks to standards and doesn't use any platform dependent features such as inline assembler code). Code written in Java will work for any architecture which has a JVM (Java Virtual Machine) ported to it. Obviously stuff written in x86 assembler only works on x86 platforms though (unless you have an emulator or something, in which case you're running the software on the emulator, not the "bare metal"). Hopefully, this clears a couple of things up -- to summarize:

-- portable (i.e. standard compliant) code will compile and run on any platform that supports the standards it conforms to.
-- binaries are platform specific, though some options exist for emulation (I believe the Bichs emulator will run on Macs).

Thank you for the quick replys. Do you by any chance now if these standards are met (writing nice non-dependent code that is?) often or am I likely to be tearing some poor floppy to piesces every time gcc gives me an error just because everything isn't really nicely written?

Cheers, Klod

I haven't had many problems compiling on Yellow Dog PPC. The only yucky thing so far was making a minor modification to some preprocessor stuff in one of the chmlib source files. Other than that everything's gone fine.