Simple Question, Invalid Link

[Alejandro Imass]

On Sat, Sep 6, 2014 at 7:49 PM, Jerry Zhang <jerryzh168 at gmail.com> wrote:

> We can’t use “apt” to install linux software? OK, I didn’t know that
> before… Thanks for the reminder.
>
>
[...]


> Is there any way to install linux software in mac by the way?
>

Depends on what you mean by "linux software". Most of what Linux users
refer to as "Linux" software is actually just OpenSource and/or Free
Software projects that are usually easily ported to many if not all Unix
and Unix-like variants, and even many times Windows. "Linux" software
itself is probably the linux kernel on top of a lot of GNU and BSD
software, so in that sense "Linux" software is just the kernel and some
basic system utilities tied directly to Linux. Most everything else is
either borrowed from other Unix and Unix-like projects or is value added by
the distribution. For example apt and dpkg are value added by the Debian
Linux distribution which is then borrowed by Ubuntu and so forth. There is
also RPM which was originally created by the distribution RedHat and then
borrowed by many others.

If the question is "can I run Linux binary files on Mac with MacPorts using
apt?"  the answer is definitively not, and you surely not going to be using
apt (more correctly dpkg)!! It is however __highly likely__ that you will
find whatever software you were using on Linux to be buildable on a Mac
using MacPorts. If not, just use an emulator like VirtualBox or VMWare.

Anyway, the answer to your question depends of what you mean by Linux
software because there is not too much of it really ;-)

Best,
Alex
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