Re: [tlug] Ubuntu Trusty (14.04) issues

[Raymond Wan <rwan.kyoto@example.com>]

On Tue, May 6, 2014 at 8:04 PM, Stephen J. Turnbull <stephen@example.com> wrote:
> Raymond Wan writes:
>  > We ought to separate our desire to get the latest versions of the
>  > software we run from Ubuntu making us upgrade.
>
> Yah, but that's not our desire.  Our desire is to have usable versions
> of *most* of our software and up-to-date (not necessarily "latest")
> versions of *specified* software.


Yes, that is true and probably related to how software depend on each
other either directly or via shared libraries.  If a piece of software
depends on the libc library, then you're basically stuck.  You have to
upgrade the library to upgrade it and that means upgrading everything
that depends on it.  As you mentioned earlier in this thread,
"pinning" can work but rarely for some of the more common software.

I wonder if there is any Linux distribution that allows you to keep
your system at one version but upgrade software like your web browser
in an isolated way such that all of its dependencies are put somewhere
so as not to disturb the rest of the system?  Though this goes against
software development, it would make upgrading far more optional!  :-)

Ironically, I think Windows does or did this.  If I recall, when you
install a new program, it copies a heap of DLLs without really
checking if you had it already.  I vaguely recall having the same DLL
multiple times in the same system.

Sorry, will stop here.  Mustn't give to much credit to Windows on this
mailing list!  :-D

Ray