Re: Linux Compatibility Issue

From: Adam Aube (aaube01_at_baker.edu)
Date: 02/14/04

  • Next message: Danny: "Re: How to install Debian with Promise FastTrak 376 chip onboard?" 
    To: debian-user@lists.debian.org
Date: Sat, 14 Feb 2004 11:32:46 -0500

    On Saturday 14 February 2004 11:58 am, Abdul Latip wrote:
    > 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.

    Actually, many Windows app CDs come with multiple installers for the
    various versions of Windows. The installer just detects the version of
    Windows and runs the correct installer - it's transparent to the user.

    The same thing could be done on Linux, but there's not much point. Most
    CDs come from the distro itself (and are therefore packaged correctly),
    and download sites usually carry packages for most of the distros (if the
    distro doesn't already provide it).

    > Whereas it is hard to install a RedHat package into Debian, and so on.

    Mostly because a RedHat and Debian package that provides the same thing
    may have a slightly different name, version number, or feature set.
    Factor in the dependencies a package has, and you can see where the
    difficulty comes in.

    > It seems they are not so backward compatible?

    Mostly because of changes in dependencies (including glibc). However, many
    Linux distributions (including Debian) backport newer versions of
    packages, so backwards compatibility issues don't come up that often.

    Even if you have to upgrade an application, the upgrade usually costs
    nothing but time, which is more than I can say for most Windows apps.

    Adam 

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