Re: Linux Compatibility Issue
On Sat, 14 Feb 2004, David Z Maze wrote:
> Abdul Latip <dullatip@angin.com> writes:
>> Once in a while, users are asking me about the compatibilty problem of
>> Linux. They reasoning that M$Office can be installed anywhere like
>> Win98, WinME, WinNT, et. al. Whereas it is hard to install a
>> RedHat package into Debian, and so on.
> ...and it's hard to install Office on Red Hat, or a Debian package on
> WinXP. This isn't surprising. :-) The closer analogy is that it's
> almost as easy to install a Debian package on Debian potato, woody,
> sarge, etc.
Apology for my poor english. It was not my intention to compare
Linux with M$.
>> AFAIK, CMIIW, this is related with the compiler version, the glibc
>> version, the kernel version, and the kernel configuration and
>> modules. May I know what exactly the Linux compability problem
>> is ? I.E.: It seems they are not so backward compatible?
> "What are you really trying to do?"
Thank you for the question! My intention is to understand
myself what the problem is, so that I can answer questions
from the users.
Qouted from a "README.linux" file:
[...] Linux is the most self incompatible OS I know.
[...] Libc.so.6 is definitely a big problem in binary compatibility.
[...] The dynamic linker on Linux does not work correctly.
> There are some compatibility
> issues, which mostly break into three parts: (1) it's hard to use
> newer software against older versions of the C library; (2) other
> libraries might have changed interfaces, so you need a newer or older
> version; (3) a small amount of software depends on particular kernel
> versions. Within Debian, (1) and (2) are dealt with by dpkg's
> dependency system. If you want to install software that's only
> available as RPMs (which IME is pretty rare), you can use 'alien' to
> convert to a Debian package.
Debian specific question:
If backports exist/ is possible; than why is not a new version of
package be compiled with older libs/dependencies version?
Thank you for clues...
--
Abdul Latip - Junior Staff - http://people.WebIndonesia.com/dullatip/ -
- Dear IETF: I want back my X.400 under X.25 or CLNP spam free mailer! -
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