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The problem is backwards compatibility. Someone comes along and builds their software on the latest bleeding-edge Linux distro. It won't run on older (or even
by bregma 2y ago
The problem is backwards compatibility.
Someone comes along and builds their software on the latest bleeding-edge Linux distro. It won't run on older (or even many current) Linux desktops. People curse Linux ABI instability because new binaries aren't supported by an older operating system. It is in fact the opposite to the Windows situation, in which older software continues to run on newer operating systems, but good luck getting the latest Windows software to run on a Windows 95 desktop. People are very quick to conflate the two situations so they can score more fake internet points.
The situation is not limited to desktops. For example, a very popular commercial source forge web service does not work on browsers released more than about 10 weeks ago. The web itself has become fantastically unstable and almost unusable for anything except AI bots consuming what other AI bots spew.