From owner-freebsd-current Fri Sep 27 07:51:25 1996 Return-Path: owner-current Received: (from root@localhost) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.5/8.7.3) id HAA01156 for current-outgoing; Fri, 27 Sep 1996 07:51:25 -0700 (PDT) Received: from rover.village.org (rover.village.org [204.144.255.49]) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.5/8.7.3) with ESMTP id HAA29827 for ; Fri, 27 Sep 1996 07:49:03 -0700 (PDT) Received: from rover.village.org (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by rover.village.org (8.7.6/8.6.6) with ESMTP id IAA04859; Fri, 27 Sep 1996 08:47:54 -0600 (MDT) Message-Id: <199609271447.IAA04859@rover.village.org> To: Jake Hamby Subject: Re: [Fwd: Acrobat Reader 3.0 Beta for Linux! (fwd)] Cc: current@FreeBSD.org In-reply-to: Your message of "Thu, 26 Sep 1996 19:58:37 PDT." References: Date: Fri, 27 Sep 1996 08:47:53 -0600 From: Warner Losh Sender: owner-current@FreeBSD.org X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk In message Jake Hamby writes: : I'd like to comment: Notice the wording in the announcement and on : Adobe's Web page which says it _only_ has been tested on Yggdrasil Fall : edition. Does that give you an indication how _afraid_ commercial authors : are of claiming support for the divergent varieties of Linux distributions : out there that they haven't tested? The Linux groups report that it works well everywhere. : Having a single distribution of FreeBSD has always been a _big_ win for : us, IMHO. However the fact that FreeBSD runs a variety of different Linux : versions and is nowhere near 100% compatible from a userland perspective, : implies that the differences between the various Linux flavors are : unlikely to cause programs like Acrobat Reader much trouble. Therefore it : appears that commercial vendors only "support" a single Linux flavor for : political, rather than technical reasons.... Actually, it is a credibility issue. If I say that it works on X Y and Z when I've only tested X and it fails on Y or Z, I've lost credibility. Sure, it should work there, but if it doesn't, then I look bad. We had this same problem when we released OI on Linux. We required libc 4.2 and a kernel newer than 0.99p12. However, we later found out that libc 4.4 broke binary compatibility for C++ programs (who care about those anyway)... It was a mess. Warner