> Compiling is not good enough. Linux is still in the dark ages. One thing > you have to give windows credit for is, the ability to just grab a > program and just install it. I'd like Linux to have the same sort of > capability in Linux, not just one distro but, all distro's. Linux always > talks about freedom but, it's freedom for developers not users. User > freedom is usually restricted in some way. One way being the repository > for example LTS Ubuntu try getting the newer version of programs back > ported it doesn't happen. That's just one example there are many more.
You are missing the important point: The reason that it works that way on Windows is because Microsoft dictates where and what different libraries and such shall be installed. But different linux distros can have different versions of libraries and some even have some customizations done to the libraries. In OS X Apple has solved this in the ugly way: Each application must supply all libraries it needs to use. This means a user might end up with dozens of copies of the same library, because the applications can not share. (In Windows similar things can be done with DLL:s, an application first looks in its own directory and then in the system.) But in Linux applications normally use the shared libraries (unless they are statically compiled, which means huge binaries). That means the application must be compiled against those libraries. /Peter
