Comment by erk__
3 years ago
Does that not miss the point of the above poster, this does not show that Linux have good binary compatibility, but that C is a very stable language. Would it run fine if you compiled it on a 27 year old compiler and then tried to run it on Linux is the question that should be asked if I am not mistaken.
Is it really a reasonable goal to want an operating system to run a 27 year old binary without any modification or compatibility tool? There does need to be some way to run such binaries, but doing that by making the kernel and all core ABIs stable over several decades would make evolving the operating system very difficult. I think it would be better to provide such compatibility via compatibility layers like wine and sandboxing in the style of flatpak.
Which is also how Windows itself does it. Wanna run DOS or 16-bit binaries, you reach for an emulator.
It should be noted that 32-bit versions of Windows include support for 16-bit DOS and Win16 binaries. The last 32-bit version of Windows was Windows 10, which is still actively supported.
I think it shows that compiling is prefered way to go. So it's more like twisting around the point :)
But what with old, binary only games ? Same as with old movies you want to watch and Hollywood prefers to not show anymore... They are super stupid IMO but maybe they have their reasons.
And that DT_HASH lack can be easily patched if someone wants. And if GNU will keep to sabotage like this then there is time to move off GNU. Ah, right - noone wants to sponsor libc fork for few years... Maybe article is right about binaries after all ;)