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Super happy finally to see someone call out backward compatibility (around 31:20) Linux is terrible on this axis, way worse than Windows. EDIT: and statically

Super happy finally to see someone call out backward compatibility (around 31:20) Linux is terrible on this axis, way worse than Windows. EDIT: and statically linking your app doesn't cut it. First, it's barely possible to do that with "modern" glibc. Second, glibc itself breaks old apps.

jmchuster 6y ago
That would, make sense? Microsoft has valued backwards compatibility way more than most would consider reasonable.
- nix23 6y ago
  Yes right, but you know, i thinks Microsoft should just cleanup the OS (no backward compatibility) and provide free vm's from Dos2/3/5 to Windows7 In that way MS do not have to care anymore for older software and security problems. EDIT: Why the down-vote? A lighter OS would make a lot of sense.
fluffything 6y ago
glibc is not what I would use for statically linking musl works just fine for that
- zzzcpan 6y ago
  We are not there yet. Musl works great for new projects sure, people should definitely default to it instead of glibc. But a lot of existing software doesn't just work with it, sometimes requiring way too much work and expertise to get there. I completely gave up trying to use it on arm for example, or rather on anything non-amd64, and on amd64 most software had to be patched to even compile with musl.
megous 6y ago
> Linux is terrible on this axis, way worse than Windows. Maybe GNU/Linux, but I can run binaries cross-compiled with GCC 10 on Arch Linux on some weird MIPS PoS terminal that's running Linux 2.6.30 without issues, as long as I don't use then non-existent syscalls, so I'm quite happy how Linux kernel handles backwards compatibility.
- pantalaimon 6y ago
  The Linux Kernel holds backwards compatibility to a very high regards. It's userspace that throws all this out of the window.
otherme123 6y ago
I was once afraid of uploading my Linux box, coming from Windows and fearing that any update would break my system. So I had a pretty old Linux system that at some point couldn't work properly (e.g. Firefox was so old that it didn't work on a lot of websites). But then for some reason I started to keep in sync with my distro. The update is painless, reasonably quick, and safe. Usually I only have to fix the outdated python version of my virtualenvs, and to this day I never had to rollback. I have a laptop from 2009 that runs the latests distros without problems. But it cannot run W10 properly, let alone do any work. My point is that Linux is beyond Windows in terms of "upgradeability". Giving the limited resources, why go after Microsoft level of backward compatibility, when any machine can run on the latest distro and libraries? On the other hand, why would anyone keep a XP system around if, acording to the video, a W10 would run their programs so easily? Something doesn't add up.
xalava 6y ago
I've run into the problem a few times, trying to run an old version of a software for research purposes. But for daily usage, this misses the concept of open source. Most decades old software is still maintained, rebuild and packaged by every distribution. You can't easily run a 30 years old program, but you can run its latest version, for free.

jmchuster 6y ago

That would, make sense? Microsoft has valued backwards compatibility way more than most would consider reasonable.

nix23 6y ago
Yes right, but you know, i thinks Microsoft should just cleanup the OS (no backward compatibility) and provide free vm's from Dos2/3/5 to Windows7 In that way MS do not have to care anymore for older software and security problems. EDIT: Why the down-vote? A lighter OS would make a lot of sense.

fluffything 6y ago

glibc is not what I would use for statically linking musl works just fine for that

zzzcpan 6y ago
We are not there yet. Musl works great for new projects sure, people should definitely default to it instead of glibc. But a lot of existing software doesn't just work with it, sometimes requiring way too much work and expertise to get there. I completely gave up trying to use it on arm for example, or rather on anything non-amd64, and on amd64 most software had to be patched to even compile with musl.

megous 6y ago

> Linux is terrible on this axis, way worse than Windows. Maybe GNU/Linux, but I can run binaries cross-compiled with GCC 10 on Arch Linux on some weird MIPS PoS terminal that's running Linux 2.6.30 without issues, as long as I don't use then non-existent syscalls, so I'm quite happy how Linux kernel handles backwards compatibility.

pantalaimon 6y ago
The Linux Kernel holds backwards compatibility to a very high regards. It's userspace that throws all this out of the window.

otherme123 6y ago

I was once afraid of uploading my Linux box, coming from Windows and fearing that any update would break my system. So I had a pretty old Linux system that at some point couldn't work properly (e.g. Firefox was so old that it didn't work on a lot of websites). But then for some reason I started to keep in sync with my distro. The update is painless, reasonably quick, and safe. Usually I only have to fix the outdated python version of my virtualenvs, and to this day I never had to rollback. I have a laptop from 2009 that runs the latests distros without problems. But it cannot run W10 properly, let alone do any work. My point is that Linux is beyond Windows in terms of "upgradeability". Giving the limited resources, why go after Microsoft level of backward compatibility, when any machine can run on the latest distro and libraries? On the other hand, why would anyone keep a XP system around if, acording to the video, a W10 would run their programs so easily? Something doesn't add up.

xalava 6y ago

I've run into the problem a few times, trying to run an old version of a software for research purposes. But for daily usage, this misses the concept of open source. Most decades old software is still maintained, rebuild and packaged by every distribution. You can't easily run a 30 years old program, but you can run its latest version, for free.