Executable and Linkable Format replaces a.out
Applications
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
MINIXNon-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
DeosMicrosoft Windows also uses the ELF format, but only for its Windows Subsystem for Linux compatibility system.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 .so (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 also possible to use native Linux software from package managers like Termux, or compile them from sources via Clang or GCC, that also 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.