How hard would it be to port a game from OSX to Linux?
I know a lot of games support the latter but don't support the former?
Given the source, are there major differences between the two platforms (given that the compiler is probably the same, I'm asuming OSX also uses gcc)
I have plenty of Linux & x86 programming expirience, and I'm just curious at to what it would take to get games or applications to run on both platforms? (I know there would be some serious differences because of the architecture.. but I have no clue what those would be, never looked into macs)

The main problem would be to get the code for the given games, in order to port them... and that should come at a cost (if the owner decides to lend the code for others to port). I suppose the problem would be (as you already stated) the architecture specifics of both x86 and PPC's, however I guess that depending on what language the code is written in, the compiler would take care of the architecture intrinsics, orhterwise stated in the code, of course... And being that the main problem with games being ported to mac is the OGL renderer, that should not be a problem in Linux, since the port has already been done.

Besides getting the code.. how complicated is it to port.. say C/C++ code from Mac to Linux?

I think that should depend on how the code was really programed, i. e. if the original programmers coded with POSIX in mind or not, to make it easier to port

However, I see your point. But I'm affraid that could only be determined once you take a first look at the code itself.

The code itself if the same... the problem are the libraries used to manage the machine's hardware: if i code in windows a game and i use directX, the porting will be harder than the programmer who used SDL to code his game (actually SDL exists for Win AND for Linux... almost no problems here!).

With the right exceptions, the main problem are the system libraries used

brr, i have to study english grammar... -_-''

if windoze didnt use directx, or we would have a native port of directx, then i dont think winex would be nessesary. we would only need wine.

winex is only a trick, or a placebo (uh, does the term "placebo" exist in english?ARGH, memory leak...)... you are not playing native linux games using winex! if linux had directx, it would be windows... O_o

I don't have any OSX experience, but i think the problem of porting is similar to the windows->linux porting problem: the low level libraries used by the game (graphics, sound... actually, the things managed by the Operative System).

btw, at icculus.org , check out black shades. its a game availible only by cvs and it was ported from the mac.

directx is just a very small part of the overall picture in windows.
Even if you implemented it all 100% nothing would run
Look at what wine implements to run just 1 game (the calls that the game makes)