ARTICLE - ESR gives up on Fedora

[Ben Scott]

On 2/26/07, Bayard Coolidge <n1ho at yahoo.com> wrote:
> ... the last dozen or two that I've tried don't seem to do
> the trick, and there's no x86_64.rpm available.

  Good luck with that.  A lot of video playback on Linux depends on
ripping the libraries out of MS Windows.  And since those are all
built for x86-32, they're not going to work with an x86-64 binary.

  Some argue that things like mplayer (which specialize in such ripped
libraries) are ultimately counter-productive for this reason.  They're
only useful if you happen to be running on x86-32.

> It's these sort of nonsensical integration issues that will ultimately kill
> Linux, and I suspect it's what ESR was really complaining about.

  Well, the DVD issue is far from nonsensical; it's legally mandated
by the MPAA (who have bought and paid for said legislation).  Sure,
it's not a technical thing, and it's not something we  like, but it is
reality.  There's very little we (as FOSS users) can do about it.  (As
constituents, we may have more of a say, but that's another problem
domain entirely.)  Now, if you buy a commercial, closed-source DVD
player for Linux, things will probably improve dramatically.  Whether
or not that is an acceptable solution is up to you.

  Going to the bigger binary compatibility picture in general, I
suspect this is one of those hard problems.  It may be that there
simply is not good answer, just like there is no answer for "easy,
one-size-fits-all security".

  Sure, point to MS Windows.  Ever notice how MS Windows seems to
have, well, stability problems?  Guess what: A great deal of that
comes from binary compatibility issues.  It's just that on MS Windows,
there's no mechanism (like RPM or dpkg) to tell you that those
dependencies exist.  Program A's installer just throws a bunch of DLLs
at the system and hopes for the best.  That will frequently get
Program A to work, but might break program Q that was working fine for
two years.

  I'd rather have Linux tell me that something isn't going to work,
then Windows, where I have to hope and pray it will ever work.

-- Ben