I’m really triggered by the idea that Linux makes running old software easy. The bane of my existence is finding an application that depends on libButts.5.1, but my distro ships with libButts.5.3, which isn’t backward compatible for some reason, and trying to install libButts.5.1 bricks the desktop environment for some reason.
All potentially fantastic ideas had the original author bothered to package in any of those formats. Much more common is the only release is a .deb built for an ancient version of Ubuntu, leading to my above frustrstions.
I mean not really, Appimage has been around since 2004, flatpak/docker for about a decade now. But at any rate I don't see your point, the person I replied to said it's hard to run old applications on Linux and I gave him solutions on how to do that. What does their age have to do with anything?
I don’t see your point, the person I replied to said it’s hard to run old applications on Linux and I gave him solutions on how to do that. What does their age have to do with anything?
it’s hard to run old applications on Linux
What does their age have to do with anything
I'm not sure if you're taking the piss but since those solutions are so recent, you won't find old applications packaged with those solutions.
They don't need to be packaged at the time of creation anyway, they can be packaged right now. Distrobox makes this easy, like let's say you need an application that only works on Ubuntu 18.04. It's two commands:
distrobox create--image ubuntu:18.04 ubuntu
distrobox enter ubuntu -- sudo apt-get install _package_
Then to export the package to your desktop you can even do
distrobox enter ubuntu -- distrobox export --app _application_
Boom, you have an Ubuntu 18.04 application on an OS of your choosing. You can theoretically do this with any distro, distrobox can use any OCI images from docker-hub, quay.io, or any registry of your choice.
Someone probably could. But not me. I am not a software developer, and being one should not be a prerequisite to using an OS, despite what the memes in this very group might lead one to believe.
Potentially but it’s not always that simple. I’ve literally encountered this exact scenario. OldeShit needs libY 1.9 but pacman is on 2.2. Can’t downgrade because libY uses 10 different libs collectively in the depends tree that explicitly need 2.0 or higher. So you take a look at libY and OldeShit builds only to realise several functions that libY provide have been reworked or removed, making it incompatible with OldeShit. As such OldeShit doesn’t build.
As an aside, this is quite literally why Microsoft has several different VC Redistributables. To avoid this issue. But this also creates another issue. Lol.
what you do is: you make a chroot environment that has libButts.5.1 , so it isn't really part of your system. you run your old app inside of it, so you can do your buttstuff in a safe environment
I’m really triggered by the idea that Linux makes running old software easy. The bane of my existence is finding an application that depends on libButts.5.1, but my distro ships with libButts.5.3, which isn’t backward compatible for some reason, and trying to install libButts.5.1 bricks the desktop environment for some reason.
I just searched for that lib, in an attempt to help you with the supposed problem. I won’t deny, you got me there.
And this is what is actually good about Linux. :)
No time for actual facts, only circlejerking /s
Appimage, Snap, Flatpak, Docker, Podman, Distrobox, Toolbox…
All potentially fantastic ideas had the original author bothered to package in any of those formats. Much more common is the only release is a .deb built for an ancient version of Ubuntu, leading to my above frustrstions.
AppImage has definitely made my life a lot easier in several cases!
Those are fairly recent solutions
I mean not really, Appimage has been around since 2004, flatpak/docker for about a decade now. But at any rate I don't see your point, the person I replied to said it's hard to run old applications on Linux and I gave him solutions on how to do that. What does their age have to do with anything?
I'm not sure if you're taking the piss but since those solutions are so recent, you won't find old applications packaged with those solutions.
They don't need to be packaged at the time of creation anyway, they can be packaged right now. Distrobox makes this easy, like let's say you need an application that only works on Ubuntu 18.04. It's two commands:
distrobox create --image ubuntu:18.04 ubuntudistrobox enter ubuntu -- sudo apt-get install _package_Then to export the package to your desktop you can even do
distrobox enter ubuntu -- distrobox export --app _application_Boom, you have an Ubuntu 18.04 application on an OS of your choosing. You can theoretically do this with any distro, distrobox can use any OCI images from docker-hub, quay.io, or any registry of your choice.
I wouldn't exactly call that easy, but compared to how it used to be, fair enough.
can you not recompile the app to use the new lib?
Someone probably could. But not me. I am not a software developer, and being one should not be a prerequisite to using an OS, despite what the memes in this very group might lead one to believe.
Potentially but it’s not always that simple. I’ve literally encountered this exact scenario. OldeShit needs libY 1.9 but pacman is on 2.2. Can’t downgrade because libY uses 10 different libs collectively in the depends tree that explicitly need 2.0 or higher. So you take a look at libY and OldeShit builds only to realise several functions that libY provide have been reworked or removed, making it incompatible with OldeShit. As such OldeShit doesn’t build.
As an aside, this is quite literally why Microsoft has several different VC Redistributables. To avoid this issue. But this also creates another issue. Lol.
Most of the people who post these kinds of memes unironically, aren’t actual nix users
Anyone who’s feeling Linux savvy, try getting EAX working with some X-Fi hardware. Best of luck ;)
That sounds sadistic.
what you do is: you make a chroot environment that has libButts.5.1 , so it isn't really part of your system. you run your old app inside of it, so you can do your buttstuff in a safe environment
Thanks for the suggestion. I can't wait to try buttstuff in a safe environment later.