Distro comparison

[david at thekramers.net (David Kramer)]

On Wednesday 22 October 2003 11:09, josephc at etards.net wrote:
> On Wed, 22 Oct 2003, Derek Martin wrote:
> > I think David's issue (and mine, if I'm correct) is that if the system
> > still works, you shouldn't ever have to install a new version of the
> > OS.  In practice, this just doesn't work out.  Eventually, there comes
> > a time when you need to upgrade some piece of software, and to do so
> > would cause a cascading dependency nightmare.

No, that's not my problem.  My problem is that there is no technical reason 
for Red Hat 7.3 to be incompatible with KDE 3.1.*, yet neither Red Hat or 
KDE provide that upgrade path for political reasons.  I should be able to 
run my 7.3 system and upgrade whatever parts are still compatible with my 
kernel.  If there was an incompatibility due to a kernel change causing 
binary incompatibiliy, I fully expect to have to upgrade my OS.

> I'm afraid you're thinking "Windows Terms" where software that requires
> Win2K or XP just won't run on 3.1 or 95. With Linux and most other
> Unixes, there is little if any software that requires RedHat 8 or later
> (the exception being RPM's, but those can be easily recompiled).

Not true for binaries.  Remember that up until recently a major version 
change in Red Hat usually meant a change in the binary format, and 
certainly meant a different set of gcc libraries.

There have been many packages I've fought to get installed on my machine 
that I can't.  For instance, when Yahoo changed their client detection for 
YIM, the new version of gaim would not work on my machine and I was stuck.  
I eventually got the SRPM compiled on my machine by doing some library 
symlinking, but it wasn't pretty.

> on it. In terms of distrobutions, a major version change tends to me
> nothing more than a GCC upgrade

Ah, but sometimes that's all it takes to prevent a package from running.

> support out of the box. Source compatibility is hardly eve broken.

True, but when you try to use RPM's source compatibility is not enough.


> I still think GUI applications should be left out of this conversation.
> On a production server, it is a waste of space, memory, and cycles.
> Church.

As I said, this machine is both my server/firewall and my workstation.  That 
is not going to change.

---
DDDD   David Kramer                           http://thekramers.net
DK KD  "The universe is a complicated interaction of 3 elements,
DKK D  Mr. Garibaldi.  Mass, Energy, and enlightened self interest.
DK KD  The sooner you realize that the happier you will be."
DDDD                                  - Ambassador G'Kar, Babylon 5