Re: [Ekiga-list] Ekiga on Android

[Jānis Rukšāns <thedogfarted gmail com>]

On Wed, Aug 24, 2011 at 11:19 PM, Eugen Dedu
<Eugen Dedu pu-pm univ-fcomte fr> wrote:
> On 22/08/11 10:20, Genghis Khan wrote:
>>
>>
>>> ----- Original Message -----
>>> From: Eugen Dedu
>>> Sent: 08/21/11 06:55 PM
>>> To: Ekiga mailing list
>>> Subject: Re: [Ekiga-list] Ekiga on Android
>>>
>>> There is something I want to clarify. ekiga itself works on android, it
>>> is just ekiga.net accounts which do not work, is that right?
>>>
>> I don't think that Ekiga can be installed on Android, unless Android has
>> an option to install GTK+ libraries. Though, I do know that Ekiga is
>> installlable on an OS such as iX http://www.projectix.org/ which has the
>> Enlightenment window manager installed on http://enlightenment.org/
>
> Why then linphone or other software can be isntalled on android?  Don't they
> use gtk too?

No, linphone has an Android-specific port. In general, no Linux [1]
software that is non-trivial, can run on Android unmodified. First,
Android is about just as much Linux as OS X is FreeBSD. Or even less -
it doesn't even have X (well you can install X but it's pain in the
ass). Second, Android runs on ARM while most desktop software is
written assuming it will run on x86 only.

Making Ekiga to run on Android would be a very tedious task. One would
have to make sure Ekiga and every library it depends on (including the
standard C++ library) builds and runs correctly on ARM, using uClibc
instead of a full-fledged C library. And then probably make some
additional adjustments to adapt the small screen size of a phone.


[1] Here I mean Linux as commonly understood - GNU operating system
using Linux kernel. This is where the GNU/Linux vs Linux distinction
becomes really important.

-- 
Ian