Unix-like systems The ELF format has replaced older executable formats in various environments. It has replaced
a.out and
COFF formats in
Unix-like operating systems: •
Linux •
Solaris /
Illumos •
IRIX •
FreeBSD •
NetBSD •
OpenBSD •
Redox •
DragonFly BSD •
Syllable •
HP-UX (except for 32-bit PA-RISC programs which continue to use
SOM) •
QNX Neutrino •
MINIX Non-Unix adoption ELF has also seen some adoption in non-Unix operating systems, such as: •
OpenVMS, in its
Itanium and
amd64 versions •
BeOS Revision 4 and later for
x86 based computers (where it replaced the
Portable Executable format; the
PowerPC version stayed with
Preferred Executable Format) •
Haiku, an open source reimplementation of BeOS •
RISC OS •
Stratus VOS, in PA-RISC and x86 versions •
SkyOS •
Fuchsia OS •
Z/TPF •
HPE NonStop OS •
Deos Microsoft Windows also uses the ELF format, but only for its
Windows Subsystem for Linux compatibility system.
Game consoles Some game consoles also use ELF: •
PlayStation Portable,
PlayStation Vita,
PlayStation, PlayStation 2, PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5 •
GP2X •
Dreamcast •
GameCube •
Nintendo 64 •
Wii •
Wii U PowerPC Other (operating) systems running on PowerPC that use ELF: •
AmigaOS 4, the ELF executable has replaced the prior
Extended Hunk Format (EHF) which was used on Amigas equipped with PPC processor expansion cards. •
MorphOS •
AROS •
Café OS (The operating system run by the Wii U)
Mobile phones Some operating systems for mobile phones and mobile devices use ELF: •
Symbian OS v9 uses E32Image format that is based on the ELF file format; •
Sony Ericsson, for example, the
W800i, W610,
W300, etc. •
Siemens, the SGOLD and SGOLD2 platforms: from
Siemens C65 to S75 and
BenQ-Siemens E71/EL71; •
Motorola, for example, the E398, SLVR L7,
v360, v3i (and all phone LTE2 which has the patch applied). •
Bada, for example, the
Samsung Wave S8500. •
Nokia phones or tablets running the
Maemo or the
Meego OS, for example, the Nokia N900. •
Android uses ELF (shared object) libraries for the
Java Native Interface. With
Android Runtime (ART), the default since Android 5.0 "Lollipop", all applications are compiled into native ELF binaries on installation. It's also possible to use native Linux software from package managers like Termux, or compile them from sources via Clang or GCC, that are available in repositories. Some phones can run ELF files through the use of a patch that adds assembly code to the main firmware, which is a feature known as
ELFPack in the underground modding culture. The ELF file format is also used with the
Atmel AVR (8-bit), AVR32 and with Texas Instruments MSP430 microcontroller architectures. Some implementations of Open Firmware can also load ELF files, most notably Apple's implementation used in almost all PowerPC machines the company produced.
Blockchain platforms •
Solana uses ELF format for its on-chain programs (
smart contracts). The platform processes ELF files compiled to
BPF (Berkeley Packet Filter) byte-code, which are then deployed as shared objects and executed in Solana's runtime environment. The BPF loader validates and processes these ELF files during program deployment. == Specifications ==