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The state of binary compatibility on Linux and how to address it

(jangafx.com)
196 points generichuman | 1 comments | 01 Apr 25 22:22 UTC | HN request time: 0.199s | source
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inftech ◴[02 Apr 25 10:47 UTC] No.43555394[source]▶
I think the problem is that people treat Linux as OS instead of just a kernel.

You should assume every Linux distro is a different OS so when you are shipping your app for Linux you're actually shipping your app for Debian, Fedora, Ubuntu etc

replies(2): >>43555631 #>>43558151 #
1. thewebguyd ◴[02 Apr 25 15:59 UTC] No.43558151[source]▶
This is definitely the root of it. Linux isn't the OS, your distro is.

Somewhere along the way we seem to have collectively forgotten that the distro, via it's package manager, is responsible for delivering software, ensuring compatibility, and integrating it all - at least for open source software. That was one of Debian's biggest selling points "back in the day" - that they had a huge repository and big team of maintainers packaging everything under the sun so it works on Debian.

Now we have app image, flatpak, snap, etc. All means of getting developers to ship binaries directly to users, bypassing the package managers, instead of shipping code to distros, but we shouldn't expect devs to ship to the 100s of different OSes in this ecosystem. They ship the code, distros pick it up (or don't) and make it work on their distro.

The shift to direct-to-user binaries doesn't make sense for OSS. It should be packaged by the distro, not the dev (of course, the devs can help with packaging if they are so inclined).

Obviously this doesn't apply to proprietary software, but like you said, you can just target on of the LTS enterprise distros and get a well-defined, stable base (for 10 years with Ubuntu and Red hat).