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Originally Posted by ast3r3x
Do I have to reformat my HD to install Linux? I believe I do, but that sux  I want to try and install Mandrake PPC.
Now I will destroy any credibility on linux that I seemed to have by asking this, but if a program is written for linux, and I compile a program, will it work on Mandrake PPC, or does it have to specifically be written for Linux PPC instead of Linux x86. I mean is the code the same and the compiler different or or are there no programs for PPC linux distros. |
If there's a tool that will let you resize the HD to clear space for a Linux partition, you don't have to reformat the HD. Linux goes into its own partition. Then you just boot either OS.
The code must either be immediately compatible across compilers and architectures (rare), or it has to be ported. This might or might not be a big effort. Good, well documented and flexible code is generally easy to port. Code that works close to hardware level or is very optimized tends to be hard to port. All that there is to the porting process is to identify platform dependencies and assumptions, and either generalize them to platform independent form, or if that is impractical or impossible, write parallel code that does the same task on your target platform.