[StillBored]

This isn't really an "operating system" problem. Particularly in the open-source world, there are a number of fairly core libraries that refuse to provide any kind of API compatibility.

Then, when there are a couple dozen applications/etc that depend on that library, it's almost an impossible problem because each of those applications then needs to be updated in lockstep with the library version. There is nothing "clean" about how to handle this situation short of having loads of distro maintainers showing up in the upstream packages to fix them to support newer versions of the library. Of course, then all the distro's need to agree on what those versions are going to be...

Hence containers, which don't fix the problem at all. Instead they just move the responsibility away from the distro, which should never really have been packaging applications to begin with.

[palata]

> away from the distro, which should never really have been packaging applications to begin with.

I disagree here: the whole point of a "software distribution" is to "distribute" software. And it does so by packaging it. There is a ton of benefit in having distro/package maintainers, and we tend to forget it.