Linked by Anthony Hicks on Tue 8th Apr 2003 16:17 UTC
This (quite long) article has been written by me for two primary reasons: One, to hopefully save someone else the time and hassle associated with trying out various Linux distributions, and two, to promote some discussion and feedback regarding what a modern Linux distribution should be, and of course to contrast this with what is currently available. I am exploring the offerings of MS Windows, BeOS and MacOSX, and then taking on a number of well-known Linux distributions.
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Oddly I have not had the problems that some people report with backward compatibility. I have RH6.x RPMs of Xanim and RealPlayer for 7.x on my updated RedHat 8 system and things seem to work just fine.
Doesn't the .so library system allow any number of major versions of any library to coexist and be available to the programs that use the specific version? The kernel is also very consistent within each major version. I know someone who regularly swaps kernels from 2.0 to 2.5 and everything in between without effecting userland software.
Is it the package managers (RPM, APT) that insist on creating these compatibility issues? I have at times had to go around a stink raised by RPM when installing an older package.