Binary incompatibility of Linux distributions

[Amedee Van Gasse (Ubuntu)]

On Wed, May 20, 2009 02:13, Jerry Houston wrote:
> On Tuesday 19 May 2009 08:08:44 Amedee Van Gasse (Ubuntu) wrote:
>
>>
>>> from source so easy, relatively speaking, it becomes a visible option
>>> to the masses, whereas in Windows word, that kind of procedure would
>>> be way too daunting to even be considered among non-developers."
>>>
>>> and 'I' asked him whether he thinks 'tar zxf tarball.tgz, cd tarball,
>>>  ./configure, make,
>>> make install' is 'so easy'.
>>
>> Compared to the Windows world, yes it is a lot easier.
>>
>>
>> To do something similar on Windows, you would have to install Visual
>> Studio, which is very expensive, or Visual Studio Express, which doesn't
>>  have all the whistles and bells of the full Visual Studio...
>
> Actually, most applications for Windows don't _need_ to be compiled from
> sources.  They're distributed (even open source freeware) as Microsoft
> Installer databases (.MSI files) that are installed on nearly any Windows
>  system without any such problems.

Actually, most applications for Linux don't _need_ to be compiled from
sources. They're distributed (even open source freeware) trough the
software repositories of the respective Linux distributions so they can be
installed on nearly any Linux system without any such problems.

> Don't get me wrong -- I'm a Linux fan, or I wouldn't be here.  But
> there's no need for Linux enthusiasts to reduce themselves to straw man
> arguments.

There's no need for Windows enthusiasts to reduce themselves to straw man
arguments.


Now, what was *YOUR* argument? Did you have anything _new_ to add to the
discussion? I don't think so. We already covered the several ten thousand
pre-packaged Linux applications and we moved to the special case of the
very few apps that still have to be compiled.

You're comparing apples with oranges, I'm comparing apples with apples.

-- 
Amedee