What Distro to use

[Kevin Buettner]

On Nov 2, 10:20pm, Hawke wrote:

> Basically, I am wondering what redhat software was thinking when they
> decided to increase their version number to 7. it should be more like
> 6.5!

The change to gcc-2.96 (along with gcc-2.96 compiled binaries) alone
was enough to merit the increase of the version number to 7.  The
reason is because 2.96 uses an ABI that is not compatible with
versions of gcc used in previous versions.  Anyway, it's Red Hat's
intent to have anything within the same major version number of the OS
operate seamlessly with regard to the ABIs and libraries.  (And I
think they've been largely successful with this approach.)

I'm not altogether happy about the decision to deploy gcc-2.96 which
is actually a development snapshot instead of an official FSF release,
but there were some good reasons for it, primarily if you're a C++
developer.  The problem is that in gcc-3.0, the ABI will change again,
and will likely not be compatible with gcc-2.96.

So, there would've come a time when Red Hat (and other distros, if
they want use the latest/greatest gcc) would've had to bite the
bullet and break ABI compatibility with previous versions.  Red
Hat's choice of gcc-2.96 means that they'll have to do it twice
which is something that probably should have been avoided.

However, I think Red Hat would've been criticized no matter what they
did on this compiler issue.  If they would've been more conservative
and stayed with egcs-2.91.66 which is getting rather long in the
tooth, they would've been criticized by C++ developers for not
releasing a more modern compiler which addresses their concerns.

Kevin