Binary compatibility on Linux

[1100110]

On Sat, 10 Nov 2012 13:01:27 -0600, Jacob Carlborg <doob at me.com> wrote:

> On 2012-11-10 19:49, Jordi Sayol wrote:
>
>> Ubuntu 10.04.4 LTS is old enough?
>
> I have no idea. I don't know how often people update their Linux systems  
> and how compatible different distributions are. Sine I'm not using Linux  
> as my primary platform I was hoping someone else could answer this.
>
> What is the oldest system I need to reasonably support? I'm mostly  
> talking about tools and libraries for the D community here.
>

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.

If you need newer versions of packages, debian has its testing and  
experimental branches.

I don't remember if they still are, but Ubuntu used to take a snapshot of  
Debian Sid to base its packages on.
Linux Mint Debian gets its packages from debian testing I believe.

The point I'm making is that Debian is pretty much the upstream repo.  You  
can go as far as to test versions that haven't made it into Ubuntu or Mint  
yet.

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.