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Only if it is statically linked with everything it needs. Otherwise good luck resolving dependencies.



Even then it might not work because it could rely on a DBus daemon being there. Even a brand new binary might fail because it needs some external program they forgot to add to the dependencies list in the package, so you have to sift through to find the not at all obvious package that provides it.

Or something was compiled without some option for unknown reasons so you're just SOL unless you want to compile stuff yourself.


How is that any different from any other program on any system failing because of a daemon not running? Inter-process communication exists on every operating system. IPC means your program's behaviour can be different depending on what other processes are running. This is not specific to Linux.

Your other point is equally as inane. Anything might fail because it requires some external program, or external data files, or any other external resource. A program might fail because it requires a particular hardware device to be plugged into your computer. None of that has anything to do with the operating system.

>Or something was compiled without some option for unknown reasons so you're just SOL unless you want to compile stuff yourself.

Oh no! The terribly, impossibly difficult task of running a program! How could you ever subject me to such a fate as having to compile stuff myself. You cruel beast!


Compiling stuff yourself is generally much harder than one might want it to be be. The instructions might or might not actually work unless you're on a source based distro. It also might take hours. Or days, but the stuff that's big enough to take days generally works out of the box.

Windows has IPC, but doesn't have as heavy of an influence from the Unix philosophy, and Android seems to have even less. More stuff is just built into the OS, it's always going to be there, probably for 20 years.


Any software that has build instructions that don't work is probably written by morons. I wouldn't want to run it. I certainly have no interest in running software that takes days to compile. Overengineered crap.




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