4 ms·

I don't know, everyone here seems plenty okay to tolerate worse levels of instability from Linux binaries. :)

by gjsman-1000 8mo ago

slopinthebag 8mo ago
im too much of a mac user to understand what this references :p
- gjsman-1000 8mo ago
  Take a random Linux binary which does anything non-trivial (has a GUI, does system monitoring, etc.), try running it on a different distribution from 3 years earlier without a packaging system, and tell me how it goes.
  - lelanthran 8mo ago
    Zig is proposing the opposite problem: future versions of windows wont run even trivial zig programs from today. I can tell you that old Linux binaries run just fine on current distros. Looking at how many times you repeated your misunderstanding in this thread it's clear that, not only do you not understand the solution, you don't understand the problem either.
    - gjsman-1000 8mo ago
      > I can tell you that old Linux binaries run just fine on current distros. Simple: I don't believe you. Grab this copy of Firefox from 2022, https://www.firefox.com/en-US/firefox/96.0/releasenotes/ https://www.firefox.com/en-US/firefox/96.0/releasenotes/, and run it on a modern distribution in 2026. If you fail, my point is made.
      - lelanthran 8mo ago
        I dunno about firefox (newer crypto libs wont work) but I ran a gimp compiled in 2018 on a 2025 distro. Why specifically FF? Software without TLS does run just fine 5 years later on 5 year newer distros.
      - chroma_zone 8mo ago
        Does Debian Stable count? The page didn't include a download link, so I found it here: https://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/firefox/releases/96.0/linux-x86_64/en-US/ https://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/firefox/releases/96.0/linux-x86_... And yes, it runs perfectly fine on Debian 13.
        lelanthran 8mo ago
        He doesn't understand the problem. You aren't going to convince him because he doesn't know what the problem is.
  - CorrectHorseBat 8mo ago
    What confuses me the most is the kernel goes actually to great lengths not to break userspace, but if you rely on anything else than the kernel stuff breaks all the time, and distributions never update a released version to a newer kernel but just patch old kernels for years. So why do the kernel developers even bother?

I don't know, everyone here seems plenty okay to tolerate worse levels of instability from Linux binaries. :)

slopinthebag 8mo ago

im too much of a mac user to understand what this references :p

gjsman-1000 8mo ago
Take a random Linux binary which does anything non-trivial (has a GUI, does system monitoring, etc.), try running it on a different distribution from 3 years earlier without a packaging system, and tell me how it goes.
- lelanthran 8mo ago
  Zig is proposing the opposite problem: future versions of windows wont run even trivial zig programs from today. I can tell you that old Linux binaries run just fine on current distros. Looking at how many times you repeated your misunderstanding in this thread it's clear that, not only do you not understand the solution, you don't understand the problem either.
  - gjsman-1000 8mo ago
    > I can tell you that old Linux binaries run just fine on current distros. Simple: I don't believe you. Grab this copy of Firefox from 2022, https://www.firefox.com/en-US/firefox/96.0/releasenotes/ https://www.firefox.com/en-US/firefox/96.0/releasenotes/, and run it on a modern distribution in 2026. If you fail, my point is made.
    - lelanthran 8mo ago
      I dunno about firefox (newer crypto libs wont work) but I ran a gimp compiled in 2018 on a 2025 distro. Why specifically FF? Software without TLS does run just fine 5 years later on 5 year newer distros.
    - chroma_zone 8mo ago
      Does Debian Stable count? The page didn't include a download link, so I found it here: https://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/firefox/releases/96.0/linux-x86_64/en-US/ https://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/firefox/releases/96.0/linux-x86_... And yes, it runs perfectly fine on Debian 13.
      - lelanthran 8mo ago
        He doesn't understand the problem. You aren't going to convince him because he doesn't know what the problem is.
- CorrectHorseBat 8mo ago
  What confuses me the most is the kernel goes actually to great lengths not to break userspace, but if you rely on anything else than the kernel stuff breaks all the time, and distributions never update a released version to a newer kernel but just patch old kernels for years. So why do the kernel developers even bother?