[AnIdiotOnTheNet]

That's the point though: this sort of thing is not ridiculous on most OSs. I should be able to use old versions of software (or new ones for that matter) without having to worry about causing my system to catch fire and explode.

[phkahler]

That just requires the ability to have multiple versions of a dll, or to install specific versions with an app, or to statically link. Lots of ways to deal with that, don't distributions support any of those options?

Oh, not all libraries support that. They need to...