A few things

[Mark Jaffe]

Steve,

There are indeed a number of profound differences between x86 and PPC 
binary formats and other issues surrounding software distributions. For 
one thing, the processor architecture is greatly different, and 
supporting library code is correspondingly so. For another thing, even 
the way file-structures are addressed is different. On the x86, memory 
is addressed in "little-endian" form (low-byte first, then upper) while 
on PPC, it is addressed "big-endian" where the high-byte is first, then 
the low. This means that you must run source code through a compiler 
specifically coded to produce binary code for a particular hardware 
processor before you achieve a downloadable product.

Mark

On Sep 7, 2004, at 9:13 AM, Steve Roy wrote:
> Thank you. That is indeed how I had installed Thunderbird 0.6.
>
> I wonder what is involved in "porting" Linux software from an x86 
> distribution to a PPC one. Why is it different? Is the executable 
> format different on PPC Linux than it is on x86 Linux? That can't be 
> true. Basically, what needs to be done to the Thunderbird Linux x86 
> download to make it work on PPC and who does that?
>
> Steve
>

---
Mark Jaffe
mark_jaffe@comcast.net
(408) 972-9638
(408) 807-2093 (cell)