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by okanat 450 days ago
If Linux userspace had libraries with stable ABI, you could just tar or zip binaries and they would work. You wouldn't need to bundle system layer. This is how you deploy server apps on Windows Server systems. You just unpack and they work.

It is not a packaging problem. It is a system design problem. Linux ecosystem simply isn't nice for binary distribution except the kernel, mostly.
1 comments
icedchai 450 days ago
Linux feels a bit different since the complete system is not controlled by a single vendor. You have multiple distributions with their own kernel versions, libc versions, library dependencies, etc.

Mac OS has solved this but that is obviously a single vendor. FreeBSD has decent backwards compatibility (through the -compat packages), but that is also a single vendor.

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CRConrad 443 days ago
> Linux feels a bit different since the complete system is not controlled by a single vendor. You have multiple distributions with their own kernel versions, libc versions, library dependencies, etc.

No, AFAICS that can't be it. The problem is that all those libraries (libc and others?) change all the time, and aren't backwards-compatible with earlier versions of themselves. If they were backwards-compatible, you could just make sure to have the newest one any of your applications needs, and everything would work.

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worthless-trash 450 days ago
-compat packages exist on fedora-like systems too, usually allowing it older versions to run. I can't say how far back, but RHEL usually has current version - 1 for -compat packages.
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okanat 450 days ago
Yep, having a single supplier of the system layer usually ends up with better backwards compatibility for binary distribution.

That's also why I have the opinion that the world is worse off due to the fact that Linux "won" Unix wars.

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