Dave Gutteridge dave@tokyocomedy.com wrote:
Why should an application built for Linux not work on a distribution of Linux?
If it is a binary, it could be many things. It could be lack of a specific library, library version, GCC version, file system layout (although FHS/LSB addresses much of this), etc...
As an aside, before attempting to install CentOS, my first choice was Ubutu. But their installer kept hanging somewhere in the middle of the installation process, so I decided that was out. So Ubuntu did not impress me as an option.
Not to add to this meta-discussion, but forming an opinion of a distribution based on its installer is really narrowminded. Most people get Windows and other OSes pre-installed, so Linux reviews should focus on a pre-installed Linux distribution.
In any case, I searched around for which build would be most appropriate for me, and nowhere did I come across information that clearly said to me "You really can't or shouldn't run this kind of software on this build". Different distributions came with different philosophies,
Ironically, and despite the majority of common opinions, I believe most "packages" distros to be very, very similar. Anything with a Debian or Fedora-base is developed very similarly, and even SuSE is increasingly moving to a Fedora-like approach (and much of the release model has been the same with Red Hat for awhile now). Installers and package management is only where they slightly differ, and even those concepts are quite overlapping these days.
prices,
??? Linux is free. Now if you mean services and SLAs, yes, that's different.
and advantages. But if any one of them could not run a Linux application, then isn't that build broken?
Application Binary Interface (ABI) compatibility is why I carefully monitor each new Fedora Core release, just like I did Red Hat Linux prior.