[TriLUG] Debian Sid/Unstable

[Sean Alexandre]

On Fri, Feb 28, 2014 at 09:53:31AM -0500, Kevin Hunter Kesling wrote:
> I recall noting that Apple's solution to
> the DLL-hell of Windows was to encourage application-specific copies
> of common libraries.  
...
> I'm curious -- for exactly the reason you mention about
> packages X and Y having conflicting system library requirements --
> why at least the desktop Linux distributions haven't attempted to
> migrate to something along these lines.

I'll take a stab at this, and I'm only speaking as a Debian user...

I can think of two reasons: (1) system stability, and (2) security.

On (1): Debian does a good job of making sure everything iteroperates. Having
multiple versions of the same thing makes this harder. Granted, if this is just
a couple of client apps that don't interoperate it shouldn't be a problem. But,
if it's different server pieces talking to each other it could quickly get
messy.

On (2): Debian also seems to do a good job of patching security holes when
fixes become available. It would be harder to do this if the hole had to be
patched in multiple places.