The executable formats are all the same across distributions, but executables might require additional underlying software to work properly. If you look at Redhat based distributions, the installation product is an rpm which will include all of the requirements for a given piece of software, and will not by default install that software unless the requirements are met. (YUM is an alternative to RPM and it is used by some Redhat based versions). By definition, a GUI must have a much larger footprint than a command prompt interface. The underlying philosophy of UNIX is to simplify everything so that a given task will work as efficiently as possible. That is why there are so many utilities that will perform a single task with the output of that task being able to chain to the input of another task to do something else.

Alan

The executable formats are all the same across distributions, but executables might require additional underlying software to work properly. If you look at Redhat-based distributions, the installation product is an rpm, which will include all of the requirements for a given piece of software, and will not by default install that software unless the requirements are met. (yum is an alternative to rpm and it is used by some Redhat-based versions). By definition, a GUI must have a much larger footprint than a command prompt interface. The underlying philosophy of UNIX is to simplify everything so that a given task will work as efficiently as possible. That is why there are so many utilities that will perform a single task with the output of that task being able to chain to the input of another task to do something else.