I don't know much about programming and what your program actually does, but if you use application frameworks like Qt cross-platform development becomes much easier.
Many games come with binary installers, mostly all they depend on is a certain minimum version of the Glibc. Dependency hell can be avoided by compiling statically as much as possible or providing your own libraries in your softwares directory.
But you better ask a programmer about that, I would recommend to ask that question again in a new thread in the Programming subforum.

You can also use pipelight and WINE-pipelight to use the latest flash for ms-windows and a few other ms-windows plug-ins.

Aside from banshee,. have you tried:

amarok
clementine
rhythymbox

Firstly, I'm with you in the idea about porting from Windows to Unix / BSD / Linux / OSX / etc. It's sometimes "easy", but in most cases whole reams of code needs re-writing, or even worse re-debugging.

The trick to make this easier from the start is to use system agnostic methods and libraries as much as possible. E.g. for UI stuff try using a system independent set like Qt / wxWidgets / etc. Those work reasonably fine as is without extra programming - it's when you have a system specific one where trouble starts (e.g. WinForms / WPF in windows, or GTK in Linux).

For 3d graphics, the same applies - though the answer is even less nice. Rather than linking to Microsoft's DirectX/3d libraries, you're better off with OpenGL. Or you could try something like GLUT / XEngine.

As for system specifics like hard-locks on files, I'd advise against (as you've found). Rather try some other means and don't rely on the system to do it all for you. (Edit) Even if only targeting one single system, I'd still avoid this as much as possible - e.g. so many used settings and loading of libs in XP from non-system-secure locations that the same program needed to be run as administrator in W7 (i.e. as per root on Linux). And because they were written this way to start off with, the new security measures in later Windows have made them a lot less used these days. So my advise is to steer clear of tying yourself to any specifics which you don't control - i.e. OS "specials".

You'd definitely need an IDE and/or compiler which allows to compile code to various systems / hardware. It would also be preferable to have one which includes remote debugging and then run the other system(s) in a VM - makes life a lot simpler. Else you'll end up with various sets of source code - best method is to both compile and debug to all systems each time.

As for distributions, in Linux you'd need at least a DEB and a RPM distribution file. See these as similar to Microsoft's MSI format - though they have a few extras which might make it easier. Also try to avoid using specific libraries (especially version specific). And I've found some weird stuff happening if you go with 32/64 bit specific things, especially through RPM in Fedora (DEB under Ubuntu seems to work better with 32/64 mixes). If you're also targeting BSD the default is to compile from source, though the tendency is that someone running BSD as a server / desktop would already have some foreign install capability from a RPM/DEB file. For Apple's OSX you'd need to package into a PKG file.

The normal way I've seen this is to have all the variants available (or at least the most prevalent like MSI/DEB/RPM/PKG) for download. If you also distribute on CD/DVD/BR you might look at methods to auto-run the disc - which then also differs between systems (or even not possible on some systems / setups).

Then if you also want to target smart phones / tablets, there's about just as many similar things to think about. Both UI/Graphics/System libraries as well as packaging methods differing between Android / iOS / WP8 / etc.

So unfortunately there's no one-size fits all solution. But with a lot of forward planning you can make the effort a lot less.

1 members found this post helpful.

I'll admit that's true for programs which aren't meant to run on all systems. Though even very large programs tend to go with the multiple install file download idea as per my previous post.

E.g. look at BricsCad's installers: http://bricsys.com/en_INTL/
Provides the Windows MSI as well as the Linux DEB and RPM files for download. And no source code provided as this program is closed-source.

TobiSGD, Danka for the reply. I do have Chromium. However, Linux, Google and all web is fairly new to me. I have worked on computers since 1986 but not on line. Installed programs, pieces of programs, taught and wrote some in DOS. How do I download the program you mention and you say it will not work on games?

The freshplayer plugin is currently in early alpha state and not meant for everyday use, but rather for developing and testing. This also means that you at this time have to clone the repository (using git), compile it from source and copy the files manually into the plugin directories. This worked for me at least to get Youtube working, but it crashed on a Flash game. So while it is a nice thing in the future, at this point I would not advise to use the plugin. Anyways, this plugin is meant for Firefox (and probably other browsers with the NPAPI plugin interface), with Chromium you should already have the latest Flash if your distribution offers a package for that (contrary to Chrome, where Flash comes inbuilt, Chromium needs to install the player separately).

A simple question. Why all of the off topic discussion?

Sort of happens when a thread is kept open for 11 years.

all software ported, some kind of virtualisation.

but mainly:
miranda
skype
all games
Freemake video converter

Don't know for the rest (many games will work with Wine, some already have native Linux versions), but Skype already has a native Linux version.

Unfortunately Miranda's not possible (it's very much tied to Win32 through DotNet) - it might be possible to port it through Mono though. It is open source, so any one can try to do so. But I fear the main reason no-one's attempting it is that there's already 100's of IM apps available in Linux, some at least equal to Miranda.

As for Freemake, similar applies. I like Handbrake & MediaCoder, but again there's hundreds to choose from.

Microsoft Office,
I prefer using LibreOffice and MS Office kind of works in wine but it is still wine and not Linux native.
Some features don't work at all through wine.
+ official support would be great

A fast search only gives one mentioning on the official MS forums about this subejct. : http://social.technet.microsoft.com/...eitproprevious

There are other mentionings but I guess it are mere myths rather than 'kind of' facts.
I understand MS isn't looking into letting their Office users choose their OS.
The reason why they support MS Office on OS X in the first place is probably just the fact that it's user base has been growing so fast the last years that they otherwise would lose a lot of customers which wouldn't be the case with Linux (so they think!).

Still a lot of governments, agencies, the NASA, enterprise users, ... use Linux based operating systems,
so come on MS, go port MS Office to Linux and maybe one day you have one more customer who has been withdrawn from you since a longer while (me).

Now that I'm ranting,
why doesn't MS start making a UNIX or Linux (unix-like) operating system?
Why don't they make Windows 9 based on the Linux kernel rather then the uhum... NT-kernel.
Windows is the only modern non-UNIX-(like) operating system still around.
Linux distributions are UNIX-like, OS X runs the Bach kernel which is UNIX, BSD is a UNIX OS, ...
These are the most widely used and on desktop it is even just: Windows, OS X, Linux.

Port all file systems, formats, ... to a Linux environment, make everything graphical and add a clear terminal application rather then their (sorry, my opinion) sucky command prompt. The command prompt can be a little fun when you only use Windows occasionally but a bash CLI for example is far superior and more usable.
Users won't notice a difference because they usually are only used to a graphical environment.

It also disses the so called 'long' updates Mac users are known to laugh about when they compare their updating system to Windows PC's users.
(I remember the +/- 500 updates I didn't have an idea about what they where for when trying to shutdown my computer, thank Linus Torvalds because he came up with a GNU inspired OS so I can enjoy Mac users their pleasure in a free + open-source way.)

Of course this is much harder than it is to tell but... they are Microsoft, Bill Gates is known to be one rich, intelligent, expanding guy?!


Of course I don't like this idea on the other hand because I like the feel of safety, speed, originality by using Linux.
I only know two other people in real life that also use Linux.
But it is still a good question I think, do they (microsoft) make a lot of money by laying contacts with antivirus vendors or something?
That would be the only reason I can come up with thay they still aren't making a UNIX OS after all these years,
they did have been developing a UNIX system (Xenix) long ago but where has it gone to then?

a program to port programs to linux

I know that is a joke but what if that could actually be possible.
That would be awesome.
And of course make it so that all platforms can port to all other platforms.
Kind of like an audio file converter.