Comment by tosti

1 day ago

This is only ever relevant for proprietary software. Free software does not require a stable ABI. Great that wine exists but it should be useless.

(That and Linux doesn't implement win32 and wine doesn't exclusively run on Linux.)

6 comments

tosti

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juliangmp  1 day ago

Stable interfaces and not being in versioning hell (cough libc) would actually be good for FOSS as well.

If you make a piece of software today and want to package it for Linux its an absolute mess. I mean, look at flatpack or docker, a common solution for this is to ship your own userspace, thats just insane.

  • tracker1  1 day ago

    Agreed... I'm kind of a fan of AppImage/Flatpak/Snap (less Snap, but still)... even then, I don't use a lot of apps, and most of my variety is usually via Docker.

    It's much more bloated than it should be, but the best way to reliably run old/new software in any given Linux.

Nextgrid  1 day ago

Free software can still benefit from a stable ABI. If I want to run the software, it's better to download it in a format my CPU can understand, rather than download source, figure out the dependencies, wait for compiling (let's say it's a large project like Firefox or Chromium that takes hours to compile), and so on.

  • graemep  1 day ago

    > If I want to run the software, it's better to download it in a format my CPU can understand, rather than download source, figure out the dependencies, wait for compiling (let's say it's a large project like Firefox or Chromium that takes hours to compile), and so on.

    If its a choice between downloading a binary that depends on a stable ABI and compiling the source. They way most Linux software gets installed is downloading a binary that has been compiled for your OS version (from repos), and the next most common way of installing is compiling source through a system that figures out the dependencies for you (source based distros and repos).

bigstrat2003  1 day ago

We exist in a world where proprietary software exists, and always will exist. I want to be able to run said software if it's the best tool for the job, not be hobbled by an idealistic stance of "all software should be free so we don't bother to support proprietary software".