Endpoint Linux distros are a harsh environment for third-party software. I liked what LSB was going for, but that was a solution for a different time.
I think Windows and MacOS each hit it out of the park (in different directions) with their approaches to this. Windows (for the most part) kept supported legacy runtimes to satisfy applications via WinSxS, and MacOS forced everyone onto a smaller set of APIs that they closely shepherded and evolved. On the Linux side, the Kernel is tremendously stable, but the middle layer between that and your app is twenty constantly moving targets. We're basically throwing away a lot of the effort made on the kernel side to keep things stable.
I think GNU/Linux needs a periodic LTS standard runtime released that can be used by the Flatpaks and Snaps of the world. Some way to say 'Hey, I'm targeting Linux 2022' where Fedora, RHEL, Debian, Ubuntu, can still have their 'native' system, but there's an option for third-party software to call up to a complete and stable stack that's uniform across distributions. I also don't think it would only end up running just on Linux, we know Windows would want to be able to call to this, and so would new projects that might run on L4, or Fuchsia, Mach, BSD, or HURD. Third-party developers could target a standard Linux release that would be available across most of the computing ecosystem, and it would be up to distros and alternative OS developers to figure out how to make their products cope with executing the runtime environment.
I think Windows and MacOS each hit it out of the park (in different directions) with their approaches to this. Windows (for the most part) kept supported legacy runtimes to satisfy applications via WinSxS, and MacOS forced everyone onto a smaller set of APIs that they closely shepherded and evolved. On the Linux side, the Kernel is tremendously stable, but the middle layer between that and your app is twenty constantly moving targets. We're basically throwing away a lot of the effort made on the kernel side to keep things stable.
I think GNU/Linux needs a periodic LTS standard runtime released that can be used by the Flatpaks and Snaps of the world. Some way to say 'Hey, I'm targeting Linux 2022' where Fedora, RHEL, Debian, Ubuntu, can still have their 'native' system, but there's an option for third-party software to call up to a complete and stable stack that's uniform across distributions. I also don't think it would only end up running just on Linux, we know Windows would want to be able to call to this, and so would new projects that might run on L4, or Fuchsia, Mach, BSD, or HURD. Third-party developers could target a standard Linux release that would be available across most of the computing ecosystem, and it would be up to distros and alternative OS developers to figure out how to make their products cope with executing the runtime environment.
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