What exactly does "Binary Compatible" mean?

I was looking at the descriptions of several Operating Systems (and toy Operating Systems) and things like UnixLite is said to be "binary compatible" with Linux, and CentOS is "binary compatible" with Red Hat applications, etc.

But what the deuce does "binary compatible" mean? I can't figure it out for the life of me!

Thanks for the help!

Hi,

I am probably wrong, but this would be my view:

We use different "high level languages"...........COBOL, ALGOL, FORTRAN, C, C+ and so on?........ they would generally be in hexadecimal?

At the bottom line, all boxes speak binary? like 0 and 1.............

So, I would imagine that when it gets to machine code the languages are compatible?

This might seem like a trivial or trite response, but please remember that with assembly language, the processor matters as well?

;)

It usualy means that binary packages of one system should work on the other..
In the case of the centos / redhat it should mean that redhat .rpm packages should install and work on a centos install..

In the case of unixlite I think it means big fat 'static' linux binaries should install and run on it..

Does that still make sense ?

Jinxy's explanation is right on the money. I've used RedHat RPM packages on CentOS with success in the past.

--Th13