[georgemcbay]

Windows has even solved virtually all of "dll hell" via SxS.

Linux distros would do well to implement something similar. Disk space and RAM are cheap, having a few different versions of the same DLLs is no big deal. I don't remember the last time I had a .dll problem in Windows post Vista, whereas I still run into .so issues nearly constantly in Linux distros.

[nitrogen]

Linux has versioned libraries, but distros often ship only the latest versions. Libraries usually have filenames like "liblibrary.so.x.y.z", and an application will link to "liblibrary.so.x.y" or "liblibrary.so.x". Library maintainers also get lazy with making sure that the library stays compatible within major versions, or don't update the .so version properly.