GCC

Unix itself is a great success story in terms of portability. The Unix kernel, like many kernels, counts on the existence of C to give it the majority of the portability it needs. Likewise for Linux. For Unix the wide availability of C compilers on many architectures made it possible to port Unix to those architectures.

So Unix underscores how important compilers are. The importance of compilers was one reason I chose to license Linux under the GNU Public License (GPL). The GPL was the license for the GCC compiler. I think that all the other projects from the GNU group are for Linux insignificant in comparison. GCC is the only one that I really care about. A number of them I hate with a passion; the Emacs editor is horrible, for example. While Linux is larger than Emacs, at least Linux has the excuse that it needs to be.

But basically compilers are really a fundamental need.

Now that the Linux kernel follows a generally portable design, at least for reasonably sane architectures, portability should be possible as long as a reasonably good compiler is available. For the upcoming chips I don't worry much about architectural portability when it comes to the kernel anymore; I worry about the compilers. Intel's 64-bit chip, the Merced, is an obvious example, because Merced is very different for a compiler.

So the portability of Linux is very much tied to the fact that GCC is ported to major chip architectures.