.bin : a common binary of all distroes?

[praveesh]

Today , I went to adobe's web site to download adobe reader . Along with .rpm and .deb files, I saw another file of .bin. What is that ? . Is it a common binary for all distros ? Or is it a binary that can be converted to all other binaries like .deb and .rpm? . I also found a .tar.bz file . Is it the source code ? Do they publish the source code of reader?

[ajgreeny]

I have read that a .bin file is not unlike the .exe files for windows. As far as I'm aware they are executable across all linux distros, but their big disadvantage is that they do not, and can not, sort out and automatically install all the dependencies required by the package being installed, as they will vary from distro to distro. You therefore could end up with a package on your machine which would not run because it does not have everything else that is needed. All the .debs or .rpm files for specific distros have all the dependency requirements written into various files in the package and can then go to the distro's repos and fetch and install those packages as well. Hence no more "dependency hell", as it was called in the past.

All this does not mean that all .bin files are useless, many will run with next to no dependencies, or all their dependencies will be provided by the gnome or kde desktop you use, but it is usually safer to stick with the .deb or .rpm files made for your distro.

I'm not sure about all Adobe products, but the tar.gz file could be source code, or like their flash installer, it could just be a couple of archived files, with the libflashplayer.so which is the actual plugin itself and an installer script file.

Stick with the .deb, if one is available and you shouldn't go far wrong.

[praveesh]

Thank you, but upto my knowledge , reader is not open source.
I have read that a .bin file is not unlike the .exe files for windows. not unlike = like ? .

[k2t0f12d]

.bin is usually a binary image attached to a small shell script header that delivers the payload on a target system. .run files are usually the same thing. They often allow the user to invoke the script portion in various ways to allow experienced users access to the package contents.

.tar files are tape archives. By themselves they are a collection of files contained in one file, much like a .zip, only without any compression. If a compression is applied, the extension is changed to reflect this. A file with .tar.bz2 would be a tape archive compressed with the bzip2 program. Its contents can be examined by running this;
tar tf <filename>.tar.bz2

[Sealbhach]

not unlike = like ? .

That's a figure of speech, it's not unlike in meaning to "similar to".

,

[jespdj]

I also found a .tar.bz file . Is it the source code ? Do they publish the source code of reader?
No, Adobe dus absolutely not publish the source code of the reader. As explained above, .tar.gz or tar.bz (or .tar.bz2) files are archive files, just like ZIP files. You can unpack them with:

tar xfz somefile.tar.gz
tar xfj somefile.tar.bz2
It probably just contains the executables for the reader, that you'd have to put somewhere in a directory on your system yourself (instead of the package management system putting it in the right place for you).

[t0p]

I also found a .tar.bz file . Is it the source code ? Do they publish the source code of reader?

A file ending with a suffix like .tar.bz is an archive of files (the .tar bit) that has been compressed (the .bz bit). While source code is often presented in compressed archives, I doubt very much that is what you found here. For the simple reason that Adobe Reader is not open source. I don't know what is in the archive you found. But there is a very simple way for you to find out: download, uncompress and open the thing.

[3rdalbum]

".bin" is not a file format. Nor is ".run" (another common one you see). You'll find that files with those extensions are Linux executables, or ELF files.

Linux doesn't need filename extensions, so it doesn't really make sense for files to come with those meaningless extensions. You could have "adobereader7_install.woohoo" and it would still be recognised as a binary executable.

ELF is not only a common binary of all Linux distributions, it's also common to Unix... I think? Mac OS X's bootloader recognises it too, but curiously enough OS X itself doesn't understand it.

[forrestcupp]

.bin is usually a binary image attached to a small shell script header that delivers the payload on a target system. .run files are usually the same thing. They often allow the user to invoke the script portion in various ways to allow experienced users access to the package contents.

That is your answer. The reason .bin's and .run's can be installed on any distro is because they usually just install to your /home folder where it doesn't matter. Also, a program that is installable by a bin or run usually doesn't need any other dependencies.

A standard binary file compiled for Linux can be run on any distro because they all use the Linux kernel. One big thing that makes distros different is the way they set up their file/directory hierarchy. Deb's and rpm's are made to install files in their proper places according to those specific hierarchies. They also are made to work with other dependencies. That's why you can't just install them on any system.

Since bin's and run's usually just install to the /home folder or let you manually choose where to install, the file hierarchy doesn't matter. Because of that and the fact that they usually don't need any extra dependencies, that's why you can install them in any distro.

The downside of a bin is that either you have to manually choose where to install it, or it just installs to /home rather than in the places that your distro specifically has for stuff like that. The other downside is that sometimes it's harder to uninstall things that were installed that way.

[Polaris96]

The .bin you're talking about is just an installer. I imagine there's some degree of building going on when you run it. The installer is probably just a compiled bash script that builds and installs the actual source code from adobe's vault.

[rookcifer]

The more pertinent question is why would anyone want to use the POS that is Adobe Reader?

[praveesh]

The more pertinent question is why would anyone want to use the POS that is Adobe Reader?

I just wanted to try whether it work on my linux box

[praveesh]

That's a figure of speech, it's not unlike in meaning to "similar to".

,

Thank you . I didn't know that

[praveesh]

Thanks to all for the clarification

[ajgreeny]

That's a figure of speech, it's not unlike in meaning to "similar to".

,
Sorry about that double-negative, which I accept can make things difficult for users who's first language is not English, but sealbhach was correct.