The system call interface in linux is actually pretty stable. You can often run old binaries (at least ELF binaries) and binaries from different distributions a

The system call interface in linux is actually pretty stable. You can often run old binaries (at least ELF binaries) and binaries from different distributions as long as you have the shared libraries to go with them (including glibc). You can use a chroot or mess around with LD_LIBRARY_PATH.