On Mon, 2005-02-14 at 12:00 -0700, David Smith wrote: > Now, not to open a can of flames, but this is a point that I think the > Linux community needs to work on. I can run a game on Windows XP that was > initially written for Windows 3.1. We're talking complete with sound and > video. Now that's pretty good backwards compatibility. If I took a Linux > program from the same era and tried to run it on, say, Fedora Core 3, it > would probably segfault immediately.
No. It should run fine. I can run old RedHat 5.x (a.out, libc5) programs just fine on fedora core 3, provided I have the older runtime shared libraries installed. You simply need compatibility libaries installed. This is no different from Windows where you require certain old vbruntimes, etc. The problem that you are really talking about is better compared to DLL hell. Linux is linux and as long as you have proper kernel support for old binary formats and the shared libraries lying around, the binaries will run just fine. However, take an old program that uses some so files that you no longer have and you'll have problems. This no different than trying to run an old 16-bit VB program on windows XP. It's possible, but you will have do some work. To summarize. The problem is DLL hell and how package managers deal with multiple versions of share libraries (can you install libtiff-1 and libtiff-2 simultaniously?). These are solvable problems. I must say, though, that with nice repositories specific to my distro out there, I rarely have to install anything not packaged for FC3 for example. apt- get works week. Michael > > --Dave > .===================================. > | This has been a P.L.U.G. mailing. | > | Don't Fear the Penguin. | > | IRC: #utah at irc.freenode.net | > `===================================' -- .===================================. | This has been a P.L.U.G. mailing. | | Don't Fear the Penguin. | | IRC: #utah at irc.freenode.net | `==================================='
