The Linux kernel creator doesn’t make Linux binaries

Sep 8, 2014 14:47 GMT  ·  By

One of the main problems with Linux platform fragmentation is that there are a number of concurrent binaries available for various platforms and they are not compatible with each other. Linus Torvalds explains why he thinks that the binary concept on Linux is broken and why he doesn't use them for his projects..

The fact that most of the major distributions use different binaries is a well known problem, one that is not going to be solved anytime soon. The number of problems that need to be overcome in this regard is simply too great, but it's not impossible.

Linus Torvalds was invited to a Q&A at DebConf14 (Debian Developer Conference), which took place in Portland, USA. The Linux kernel developer and maintainer had a talk with the participants and made some interesting remarks about the current state of the binaries and the future of this thorny issue.

Linus Torvalds doesn’t provide Linux binaries for his project, only for Windows and Mac OS X

One of the many things that have been said at that conference has to do with application packaging, which is actually a nightmare on Linux. If you are a developer and you want to make binaries, you really need to pick your battles and supported platforms.

All the packages rely on shared libraries that are already on the system or that can be downloaded from the repositories. This complicates things a lot and ensures that there will be multiple binary formats for a long time on Linux.

"I've seen this first hand with the other project I've been involved with, which is my divelog application. We make binaries for Windows and OS X, and we don't make binaries for Linux. Why? Because building binaries for Linux desktop is a [expletive] pain in the [expletive]."

"You don't make binaries for Linux, you make binaries for Fedora 19, Fedora 20, maybe RHEL 5 from ten years ago, you make binaries for Debian," said Linus Torvalds at the conference.

He also explained, mostly because of the venue, that Debian used shared libraries, which is a major problem if you have a software built with your own experimental libraries.

Valve will save us all

Surprisingly, Linus Torvalds explained that the salvation for the Linux desktop might come from Valve, but not because of the games. He said that the company would definitely want some sort of unified solution and they might be big enough to force other developers in the Linux ecosystem to fall in line and follow some kind of standard.

The kernel maintainer also said that it was a very difficult problem to tackle, even for him, and that it would most likely be a long time until something is done about it.

Jump to 5:40 for the juicy stuff.