[fafnir]

BSD has a Linux emulation layer that provides binary compatibility with, well, Linux.
http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO.../linuxemu.html

I just wonder: How hard or useful would it be to port this to OS X?

[hookem2oo7]

i dont think it would be useful unless there was a linux-ONLY app that you needed in a life and death situation. losts of "linux" apps will already compile and install on our systems anyways...

[wataru]

If you want virtualization (like running a Linux system in a window on your Mac) then that's a separate issue. This wouldn't be useful because, as hookem2oo7 said, most apps that target Linux can be compiled on OS X without too much trouble.

[P]

How hard? Probably not too hard - there is a mechanism for running CFM-applications (Carbon apps linked according to the old Classic Mac OS PPC linker model) so I suppose you could hack in ELF-support as well. The OS X kernel isn't missing any specific features (well, other than specific filesystems etc) that Linux has - the difference is mostly in the performance of various operations.

There isn't really a lot of reason though. That FreeBSD has it is because Linux has a bigger market share than FreeBSD, and it's a Good Thing to be able to install binary apps for Linux. OS X has a bigger market share than Linux (still...) and is focused mostly on client apps, an area where Linux is weak. Since many Linux apps are GPL, where publishing the source code is mandatory anyway.