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Is there any "portable" software for Linux (i.e., Ones that can just be un-tar'd and used, instead of in rpm, or similar format. to be used in conjunction with a package manager)?

Also, are there any caveats to this that don't exist for Windows portable programs?


P.S Not sure what the community thinks about adding the tags like or to this site is. I realise that Portable is likely to be considered more of a Windows feature, but would think that software that doesn't come in a rpm format, or via a repository, may be loosely considered as such in the Posix world.

user66001
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    Neither “portable” nor “no-install” designate this concept in the unix world. Portable means something that works on different unices or different CPU types. No-install is a misnomer because untarring is still installing. “Location-independent” is how I'd call an application that can run wherever its directory tree is rooted. – Gilles 'SO- stop being evil' Oct 04 '13 at 22:45

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In theory, all GNU/Linux applications are "portable" under your definition of the word. Tar on one system, untar on the other and there you are. In practice, however, things are rarely this pink and fluffy.

You start running into trouble because of things like the absence of libraries the program was linked against (and you better believe a media player needs a lot of these!), outdated (or non-existent) interpreters for your script (if we're talking about an application written in a scripting language like Python or Perl) and so on.

You can find out the libraries needed by your program and bundle them along with your executable using something like:

ldd path_to_executable|cut -d '>' -f2|grep '^\s*/'|sed 's/^\s*//;s/\s*(.*$//'

But this is not a guaranteed fix: you can still run into problems if your executable was linked against 32-bit libraries and you're trying to run it on a 64-bit system or if your executable was compiled for a different architecture from the one you're trying to run it on.

That said, if you're looking for a stable environment (not just a media player) that you can carry around with you, why not consider a LiveCD distribution (whether on an actual CD/DVD or a thumb drive)?

Joseph R.
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  • Thanks muchly for the info Joseph R. - I hate to point out, though, that none of it really answers the question :( Anyways, I withheld that this question is based on a need *for* a LiveCD distro, due to another question I asked where the community couldn't seem to get past that I wasn't using a LiveCD as my full-time distro. So, do you happen to know of any media players that come with all the files (libraries, codecs, what-have-you) in the download, and ?linked? to their relative paths (I presume this is more correct that my first attempt at describing the requirement)? – user66001 Oct 05 '13 at 01:13