4 ms·

So much so that even only linux, the most stable API arguably is win32 through wine. Atleast for desktop related tasks.

• doublepg23 3y ago
  Are the compatibility issues on Linux really an API issue or having incompatible, newer versions of libraries? The effect is the same, your old program doesn’t run, but the cause is very different.
  • Asooka 3y ago
    The latter. Old versions of libraries aren't maintained and you're on your own to compile effectively from scratch an entire distro's worth of libraries. Ironically, it should be easier to have as strong backwards compatibility on Linux as Windows, since all .so files are versioned and almost never break the API within the same major version, so you're spared the DLL hell of a program linking with blah.dll expecting it to be version 1, but you have version 7 installed. On Linux the program would link with libblah.so.1, not the libblah.so.7 you have installed.
  • fredoralive 3y ago
    Incompatible, newer versions of libraries is an API issue? An OS is more than a kernel, and on Windows if you link to the standard set of libraries provided with the Windows, Microsoft tries not to break them.