On Sat, Sep 05, 2009 at 01:03:28PM +0100, Jon Harrop wrote:
> Linux is basically a complete disaster in this regard because it
> offers so little binary compatibility between distros.

You probably want to use a commercial Linux distribution.  Red Hat (as
an example) *guarantee* perfect binary compatibility for the 7 - 10
year lifespan of a release of RHEL.

By guarantee I mean any binary incompatibility is treated as a
regression and fixed as a very high priority (just below security
issues).  We internally run source level tools to try to avoid
releasing incompatible ABIs in the first place.

> Building upon a decent VM solves this problem and many others, of
> course, but Linux has none.

Not sure what you mean by this.  Linux was the first _PC_[1] OS to
incorporate a hypervisor into the kernel (Xen or KVM depending on your
interpretation of the words "hypervisor" and/or "incorporate").

With RHEL 6 we'll also be making the same ABI guarantees as above for
KVM virtual machines.

Rich.

[1] VM/CMS and the rest was on mainframes, m'kay?

-- 
Richard Jones
Red Hat