On Saturday, 10 November 2012 at 19:15:28 UTC, 1100110 wrote:
> If people are using older versions than Debian Stable, then you should probably forget about them.
> Either they will cherry-pick the versions they need, or they are not interested in anything new and untested.
>
> Just my two cents as an ex server admin.

This seems like a reasonable policy to me as well.

David

On 2012-11-10 20:17, Robert wrote:
> I would say supporting distributions which are no longer supported by
> the distributions itself is of very little value. So for Ubuntu the last
> still supported LTS version should be old enough.
>
> I think virtually nobody is using anything older, especially not 06.XX!
> And if they do, then they will have a whole bunch of other problems than
> not being able to use your program.

I just picked the 6.x version to be sure it was compatible with everything else.

You say the latest LTS, but the LTS are supported for five years. Don't they release new LTS more often than that? According to this https://wiki.ubuntu.com/LTS They release a new LTS every two years and they're supported for five years.

If I pick Ubuntu 12.04, which is the latest LTS, they still support 10.04 until 2013.

-- 
/Jacob Carlborg

Al 10/11/12 21:18, En/na Jacob Carlborg ha escrit:
> On 2012-11-10 20:17, Robert wrote:
>> I would say supporting distributions which are no longer supported by the distributions itself is of very little value. So for Ubuntu the last still supported LTS version should be old enough.
>>
>> I think virtually nobody is using anything older, especially not 06.XX! And if they do, then they will have a whole bunch of other problems than not being able to use your program.
> 
> I just picked the 6.x version to be sure it was compatible with everything else.
> 
> You say the latest LTS, but the LTS are supported for five years. Don't they release new LTS more often than that? According to this https://wiki.ubuntu.com/LTS They release a new LTS every two years and they're supported for five years.
> 
> If I pick Ubuntu 12.04, which is the latest LTS, they still support 10.04 until 2013.
> 

>From Ubuntu 12.04 (April 2012), LTS has 5 years of support for Desktop and server versions. Before this, LTS for Desktop has 3 years support, so the last Ubuntu Desktop still supported is 10.04 (April 2010) and will finish in April 2013.

-- 
Jordi Sayol

> 
> You say the latest LTS, but the LTS are supported for five years. Don't they release new LTS more often than that? According to this https://wiki.ubuntu.com/LTS They release a new LTS every two years and they're supported for five years.

I am sorry. I haven't quite said what I meant. I meant: The oldest still supported LTS of course :-)

Also there are very few desktop users using such an old version, so if you don't target server systems, you might even relax your requirements further. But with the oldest still supported LTS release you are pretty much on the safe side.

Best regards,

Robert

>From Ubuntu 12.04 (April 2012), LTS has 5 years of support for Desktop and server versions. Before this, LTS for Desktop has 3 years support, so the last Ubuntu Desktop still supported is 10.04 (April 2010) and will finish in April 2013.
> 

s/last/oldest/

-- 
Jordi Sayol

Am 10.11.2012 19:54, schrieb Jacob Carlborg:
> On 2012-11-10 18:39, Paulo Pinto wrote:
>
>> I guess the right answer is to have everything compiled statically,
>> especially if you need compatibility across distributions.
>
> I just read somewhere that compiling it statically will make it _less_
> compatible than compiling it dynamically.
>
> http://stackoverflow.com/questions/8657908/deploying-yesod-to-heroku-cant-build-statically/8658468#8658468
>
>

Oh, the wonder of Linux based systems. :(

Jacob Carlborg wrote:

> What's the best way to achieve binary compatibility on Linux? For example, if I compile an application on, say Ubuntu 12.04, it will most likely not run on any older versions of Ubuntu but it will run on future versions.

The best way is to get your software in the official debian archive. There
are infrastructure and established workflows to recompile packages for each
Debian version.
The backports archive contains newer versions of a package for the current
stable Debian release.

Is the software in question free software? It's not that hard to get software in Debian. Have a look at http://wiki.debian.org/UpstreamGuide

Regards, Thomas Koch

On 2012-11-10 22:14, eskimo wrote:

> I am sorry. I haven't quite said what I meant. I meant: The oldest still
> supported LTS of course :-)

That makes more sense.

-- 
/Jacob Carlborg

On 2012-11-11 10:30, Thomas Koch wrote:

> The best way is to get your software in the official debian archive. There
> are infrastructure and established workflows to recompile packages for each
> Debian version.
> The backports archive contains newer versions of a package for the current
> stable Debian release.

I don't want to limit myself to just the debian based package mangers. I want my tools to be available/usable on all distributions.

-- 
/Jacob Carlborg

On 2012-11-10 20:10, 1100110 wrote:

> Oldest system to reasonably support?  I would say Debian Stable.
> It is used on a lot of server systems and isn't *too* far behind/old.

How compatible is Debian with non-debian based distributions?

-- 
/Jacob Carlborg