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How processor/architecture specific is the Mint code?

Posted: Sat Aug 18, 2007 9:26 pm
by Lolo Uila
Encouraged by how well the XFCE community edition ran on an old Pentium-3 system (see my message in this thread) I decided to load the XFCE version of PPC64 Ubuntu on my PS3.

It does run faster than the Gnome version of Ubuntu on the PS3's limited memory, but it's still not Mint. How processor specific is the Mint code? Could the source be recompiled for Ubuntu PPC64?

Aloha, Tim

Posted: Sat Aug 18, 2007 10:53 pm
by scorp123
Armed with the sources (mostly C stuff I guess?) and a compiler (e.g. 'gcc') that can handle the CPU platform in question you could probably re-compile anything you wish for any of the hardware platforms that the Linux kernel can be compiled for. But this is quite time-consuming; also: not everything can be recompiled for every hardware platform even if you have the sources. Some programs simply depend on some features that only certain CPU-types will provide (e.g. CPU-specific Assembler code!); hence any attempt to recompile things for another CPU platform might all of a sudden hit unexpected roadblocks and obstacles. Working around those obstacles can be quite time-consuming and is the main reason why most distros settle on providing their releases only on specific platforms (e.g. Intel i386, AMD-64, PowerPC, SPARC .... but e.g. not for HP PA-RISC, IBM S/390, or StrongARM or BlackFin ....) and not for every possible CPU that the Linux kernel coud be compiled for.

But in theory yes, it's possible.