If you're just going to sit there doing nothing, at least do nothing correctly

Re:If you're just going to sit there doing nothing, at least... by RetroTechie on Saturday February 17, 2024 @08:33AM (#39409252)

> Linux kernel on its own doesn't run software.

Linux runs /sbin/init.

Which you can make any executable you want.

Not to mention initial RAMdisk (loaded by a bootloader like grub) which can be of arbitrary size & loaded up with an arbitrary ton of goodness.

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Re:If you're just going to sit there doing nothing, at least... by pjmlp on Saturday February 17, 2024 @10:20AM (#39410218)

Yeah, which is quite far from a full OS experience providing ABI compatibility across several generations of operating systems.

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Re:If you're just going to sit there doing nothing, at least... by RetroTechie on Saturday February 17, 2024 @11:25AM (#39410856)

Linux (kernel) has a userland ABI of its own. Which is pretty stable & rarely broken (Linus will probably breath fire @ any kernel developer who does break user space). So eg. 10y old statically compiled binaries will likely run fine on recent kernels.

But as you state: it's the OS-level ABI's (C library, desktop environments, middleware libraries, etc) that keep changing constantly. And thus, keep breaking pre-compiled binaries.

Source-level API vs. binary ABI stability. Kind of a philosophical debate imho. But sadly, even that source-level API isn't too stable in some circles.

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