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by marcosdumay 3320 days ago
> Backwards compability is another topic, especially with the rise of systemd.

User level ABI has had no important incompatibility since the glibc released with the kernel 2.6 (don't remember the version). That was some 15 years ago. Most applications didn't even break at that time, and core libraries promise more stability now.

That's nothing similar to the compatibility break between Windows XP and Vista. That transition broke most of the older applications, at the kernel level.

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> That's nothing similar to the compatibility break between Windows XP and Vista. That transition broke most of the older applications, at the kernel level.

First i hear of this, so MS did a damn good job of papering over it.

The only Windows breakage on the software level i have noticed is the jump from 32-bit to 64-bit, and that has more to do with CPU modes than Windows internals.

But i keep battling crazy dependencies and odd breakages related to desktop software on Linux. Never mind that devs keep reinventing the wheel (how many VFS implementations have Gnome gone through now? 3? 4?).