I hate Linux!

[RichardRussell]

As a dyed-in-the-wool Windows user I struggle with other Operating Systems, but none gives me such grief as Linux. I recently updated my Linux box from Ubuntu 18.04 LTS to 20.04 LTS, because it seemed like a good thing to do, but now I'm receiving reports from users that the Linux edition of BBCSDL v1.17a (which I build on that machine) no longer runs.

It turns out that when you build an executable in Linux it incorporates a dependency on the version of libraries which are installed on your machine, so now BBCSDL depends on the libraries that come with 20.04 whereas previously it only depended on the 18.04 libraries. Seemingly, some other Linux distributions don't have those new libraries, so BBCSDL doesn't run.

The astonishing thing is that it appears (from what I've managed to ascertain from Google searches) that there's nothing you can do about this! On every other platform I can either specify exactly what minimum OS version I want my build to target (e.g. Android and MacOS support that) or it doesn't matter anyway because binary compatibility is maintained between versions (e.g. Windows).

Don't bother to try to defend Linux, it's a lost cause as far as I'm concerned!

[KenDown]

Good grief!

But cannot you not specify that it will work with this distro and not that? (Based on user reports, not on personal experiment, I hasten to add.)

[RichardRussell]

But can you not specify that it will work with this distro and not that?

So you're suggesting that I should respond to those users who complained that BBC BASIC no longer works by saying "hard luck, your Linux distro is no longer supported"? That might indeed be the approach of somebody like Apple, but I am (or try to be) a responsible vendor and to me it's indefensible.

[KenDown]

I agree that it is indefensible and very poor programming. Nevertheless the reply I suggest is truthful and puts the blame where it belongs.

Of course, if you can work out which elements are missing and suggest how they can be found and installed, or which distros do work with SDL, that would be a bonus.

[RichardRussell]

Nevertheless the reply I suggest is truthful and puts the blame where it belongs.

You can look at it in different ways. Because no competent Linux programmer would have made the mistake I did (updating a system used to build a distributed executable), it's entirely reasonable to hold me to blame. Ignorance is no excuse.