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Linux itself has this and is very strict about not breaking old userspace. It's the userspace libraries that likes to drop compatibility with old binaries left

Linux itself has this and is very strict about not breaking old userspace. It's the userspace libraries that likes to drop compatibility with old binaries left and right and with most distributions it's not possible to install old versions of libraries. Containers like Flatpack and Snap promise to solve this by just bundling the application with all the libraries it needs, frozen in time. The Kernel then can handle it.

dijit 8y ago
Serious question; doesn’t static compilation do the same thing essentially?
- ObscureScience 8y ago
  Kind of, but I guess the other solutions are slightly better at accomodating services that are more than a single binary. I think static binaries really should be evaluated again as they seem to be written off by most big players. Though Go(lang) has preferred static linking which has been something that seem to have been appreciated.
  - tfigment 8y ago
    Static has its own issues. GPL vs LGPL forces a lot of apps to dynamic. Also security vulnerabilities in libraries become unpatchable.
    - AnIdiotOnTheNet 8y ago
      Apps are always the most secure when they can't run at all because of ABI changes in their dependencies.
    - chronogram 8y ago
      I’d rather be able to run something that’s security flawed than not run it at all. Those security issues in libraries are probably not such a big deal anyway, because you can run Unreal Tournament 1 multiplayer now and not immediately get hacked, I’m sure. Maybe I just got very lucky.
skrebbel 8y ago
I have little Linux experience, so pardon me for asking silly questions. Doesn't Linux then choose a weird place to put the border between "OS" and "userspace"? If, say, an opengl library or an ssl library installed by the distribution breaks backward compat with earlier versions, how is that not the OS breaking backward compat? Sure, if a user hand-installs some new library version, globally in the system, --force, y y y, then I get it. Things will break. But that's not what's going on, right? It feels a bit weird to see the kernel folks put so much effort into "never breaking userland" only to have the distributions throw that all away with a "yolo, the new libyadayada is 1% faster and who cares about old programs!" kind of attitude. Is that really how this works? Or am I just misunderstanding some nuance? I'm not trying to be critical on anyone btw, I'm just trying to understand what's going on :-)
- majewsky 8y ago
  > Doesn't Linux then choose a weird place to put the border between "OS" and "userspace"? Your fallacy is assuming that "Linux" is a single entity with a single mind. Linus is very strict about backwards compatibility, but he only controls the kernel, not glibc or Mesa or KDE.
  - kkarakk 8y ago
    there's a reason people don't use linux outside of the server space and most of it is every piece of weirdness introduced above linus. the more esoteric your linux flavor(and closer to bare metal it is), the better your linux experience long term.
    - sascha_sl 8y ago
      A dependency is a dependency. The distro does not matter. It matters what the game depends on and what the distro ships. Or, you know, snaps and appimage and flatpack. Where your only hard dependency becomes Linux. Which doesn't break userspace. Some early linux games made the mistake of using low level graphics libraries (not one of the opengl levels), these might not work because the newest drivers just don't support it.
AnIdiotOnTheNet 8y ago
It's made worse by the common UNIX developer insisting on hard-coding fixed paths into things. The whole ecosystem is just plain hostile to the idea of applications that aren't recompiled every time something changes.
- easytiger 8y ago
  Got a list of such software?
badsectoracula 8y ago
Of course as far as graphical desktop software goes, 99% of the dependencies are in the userspace. Unless the userspace libraries (or parts of it) decide to follow Linus' mantra of not breaking the applications that rely on their code, kernel not breaking userspace isn't very useful to graphical desktop applications.

dijit 8y ago

Serious question; doesn’t static compilation do the same thing essentially?

ObscureScience 8y ago
Kind of, but I guess the other solutions are slightly better at accomodating services that are more than a single binary. I think static binaries really should be evaluated again as they seem to be written off by most big players. Though Go(lang) has preferred static linking which has been something that seem to have been appreciated.
- tfigment 8y ago
  Static has its own issues. GPL vs LGPL forces a lot of apps to dynamic. Also security vulnerabilities in libraries become unpatchable.
  - AnIdiotOnTheNet 8y ago
    Apps are always the most secure when they can't run at all because of ABI changes in their dependencies.
  - chronogram 8y ago
    I’d rather be able to run something that’s security flawed than not run it at all. Those security issues in libraries are probably not such a big deal anyway, because you can run Unreal Tournament 1 multiplayer now and not immediately get hacked, I’m sure. Maybe I just got very lucky.

skrebbel 8y ago

I have little Linux experience, so pardon me for asking silly questions. Doesn't Linux then choose a weird place to put the border between "OS" and "userspace"? If, say, an opengl library or an ssl library installed by the distribution breaks backward compat with earlier versions, how is that not the OS breaking backward compat? Sure, if a user hand-installs some new library version, globally in the system, --force, y y y, then I get it. Things will break. But that's not what's going on, right? It feels a bit weird to see the kernel folks put so much effort into "never breaking userland" only to have the distributions throw that all away with a "yolo, the new libyadayada is 1% faster and who cares about old programs!" kind of attitude. Is that really how this works? Or am I just misunderstanding some nuance? I'm not trying to be critical on anyone btw, I'm just trying to understand what's going on :-)

majewsky 8y ago
> Doesn't Linux then choose a weird place to put the border between "OS" and "userspace"? Your fallacy is assuming that "Linux" is a single entity with a single mind. Linus is very strict about backwards compatibility, but he only controls the kernel, not glibc or Mesa or KDE.
- kkarakk 8y ago
  there's a reason people don't use linux outside of the server space and most of it is every piece of weirdness introduced above linus. the more esoteric your linux flavor(and closer to bare metal it is), the better your linux experience long term.
  - sascha_sl 8y ago
    A dependency is a dependency. The distro does not matter. It matters what the game depends on and what the distro ships. Or, you know, snaps and appimage and flatpack. Where your only hard dependency becomes Linux. Which doesn't break userspace. Some early linux games made the mistake of using low level graphics libraries (not one of the opengl levels), these might not work because the newest drivers just don't support it.

AnIdiotOnTheNet 8y ago

It's made worse by the common UNIX developer insisting on hard-coding fixed paths into things. The whole ecosystem is just plain hostile to the idea of applications that aren't recompiled every time something changes.

easytiger 8y ago
Got a list of such software?

badsectoracula 8y ago

Of course as far as graphical desktop software goes, 99% of the dependencies are in the userspace. Unless the userspace libraries (or parts of it) decide to follow Linus' mantra of not breaking the applications that rely on their code, kernel not breaking userspace isn't very useful to graphical desktop applications.