Quote:
Originally Posted by Sarmat89
Linux is supported for less than a year. Any more or less complex software can run for decades on Windows, but in Linux it rots completely just in few years.
|
Um, no it really doesn't?
Your software can build once, with dependencies statically linked, and run forever. glibc's ABI supports 20-year-old programs. The linux kernel doesn't break userspace.
Conversely, if you have Windows software that predates Windows XP, your best bet to run it is on Linux using WINE.
Not running it on Windows.
Drivers on Windows break just as often on Windows, you certainly don't get "decades" of use out of them. They break on Linux too, but the Linux kernel developers successfully pressured many vendors into open-sourcing their drivers and contributing them to the kernel itself, at which point they don't rot because the kernel developers maintain it for everyone, which is why Linux users rarely worry about installing drivers from a CD... and rarely install drivers at all, except for NVIDIA (as per a famous meme).
Sometimes programs may stop
building, but only if no one is interested in maintaining the source code. And it very much depends on whether the software components they depend on have also changed. If it's open source and people care about it, it will be maintained by the community, usually with only very minor patches that you can get from a dozen different, highly reputable distros that beat you to it. If it's closed source proprietary stuff, you don't care if it doesn't build... you never got to try, all you have are still-working binaries.
...
By all means, please do keep telling me how the hundreds of software components I keep on building all the time for a linux distro "completely rot in a year". I must have completely not noticed this, but it sounds like something I should really know, given it's my job to do what you're telling me I can't do.