Not the person you’re replying to, but Linux has long had a policy of “F backwards compatibility” in the userspace. Try running a 10 year old binary on the current version of a distro. Try a 5 year old binary. Chances are, it’s not going to work, or you’re going to go through dependency hell trying to get the correct library versions for that old binary.
But notice how Windows 11 can run a Windows XP app.
That’s the problem. Most users aren’t going to want to compile from source, assuming the software they’re trying to use is even open source. Hell, nvidia users constantly have driver issues because the binary blobs must be updated to continue working after kernel updates. And that’s not to mention all the competing package managers and distro quirks with library versions and naming.
Not the person you’re replying to, but Linux has long had a policy of “F backwards compatibility” in the userspace. Try running a 10 year old binary on the current version of a distro. Try a 5 year old binary. Chances are, it’s not going to work, or you’re going to go through dependency hell trying to get the correct library versions for that old binary.
But notice how Windows 11 can run a Windows XP app.
That’s the problem. Most users aren’t going to want to compile from source, assuming the software they’re trying to use is even open source. Hell, nvidia users constantly have driver issues because the binary blobs must be updated to continue working after kernel updates. And that’s not to mention all the competing package managers and distro quirks with library versions and naming.