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[Ed Hurst]

Jonathan E. Brickman wrote:

> But a commodity desktop replacement, Linux just isn't right now.  If the 
> architecture were expanded to permit multiple glib versions -- a 
> seriously huge addition, I do recognize it, it could perhaps constitute 
> a glib replacement with something different -- then it could be.  And 
> the server level would also benefit.

Very eloquent. I seem to recall reading a discussion once where someone 
was running a newer set of libs on /usr/local/ than in his root system. 
Another would place all the newer libs in directories named by release 
number so the basic system would avoid calling them, but the app which 
just *had* to have the newer libs would still run. I remember thinking 
that was be pretty tough on the "one version" ways of Linux.

A critical problem, as you say, is servers are designed to run a lot 
longer than most Linux distro releases. Upgrades are not an unalloyed 
good. Is there any OS besides Windows which is predicated on building 
backward compat that way? I know a select group of Debian backports do 
get re-worked to run on older releases, but I recall reading how that 
seems such a monumental effort in some cases.

-- 
Ed Hurst
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