2 ms·

> Are you aware that the original binary format of Linux was not ELF? Yes, and having an a.out interpreter is just another dependency. > Then, the last time I

by msla 6y ago

> Are you aware that the original binary format of Linux was not ELF? Yes, and having an a.out interpreter is just another dependency. > Then, the last time I tried to run a binary from the 90s, it required libc5, from the days before distros switched to glibc. It's a library. libc is versioned like everything else.

asveikau 6y ago
Nobody is distributing that library anymore. Whereas an equivalently aged binary on Windows will load today without extra dependencies. I would think that the kernel would have dropped binfmt_aout by now, but I just looked and it's still there. Wonder if any distros build it.
- chungy 6y ago
  > Nobody is distributing that library anymore. There exist plenty of archives of old Linux distributions. "Nobody" turns out to be quite a lot of people/servers. > Whereas an equivalently aged binary on Windows will load today without extra dependencies. I wouldn't go so far. The 64-bit port of Windows dropped support for all 16-bit applications, whereas they still run flawlessly through Wine.