> > I think we need to colour this properly. If we > could > > make things somewhat like the Mac OS X environment > > with stable libraries (kernel-wise i believe Open > > Solaris should not have a problem...) then there > > Solaris offers stable interfaces back to a time when > Mac OS X did not exist.
Great. That was then. This is now. Now you have a whole bunch of moving targets like qt-*, gtk-*, xorg-* (hmm are they all desktop related?) and other cruft. Please note that I am not at all including the Solaris kernel since there is no problem there at all except for drivers making use of new features like the SATA framework which may not be available for older releases but even then this is not an issue here. The Mac OS X environment provides more or less fixed system libraries and coupled with their 'file is a directory' filesystem feature, it allows you to make a package that you just download to whatever location you fancy and the act of downloading has achieved installation. Having stable system libraries makes this possible. Say a distribution goes with qt-3.x as a system library. A newer release would not be necessary unless they want to use qt-4. Even then, it is possible to provide backward compatibility. So the six months till the next release sounds kind of arbitary. It is better imho to put out a new release if it uses new system libraries and their calling applications or uses other stuff that break previously expected behaviour by default (like people here would allow that...). Of course, one could try to cover every possible library and tell developers not to worry about which release will support their stuff... Send instant messages to your online friends http://uk.messenger.yahoo.com _______________________________________________ opensolaris-discuss mailing list [email protected]
