[Lazarus] The perfect Linux distro for FPC and Lazarus development

[Mark Morgan Lloyd]

Graeme Geldenhuys wrote:
> Op 2011-03-07 11:06, Mark Morgan Lloyd het geskryf:
>> however is that Debian/Ubuntu do have a fairly well-tested mechanism in
>> place for upgrading libraries etc. when necessary, while Slackware- at
>> least when I last looked- has to be reinstalled which is significant 
>> work.
> 
> I wouldn't know about OS upgrades - even for Ubuntu. I *never* upgrade 
> an OS,
[...]
 > This setup has worked very well for me for the last 5+ years,

Well I do- when I have to- and sometimes it works and sometimes it 
doesn't. I just think that it's important to have the option, and I'm 
writing that with the benefit of rather more than five years experience.

If, as you suggest, you back up and selectively restore /etc (plus 
/usr/local/etc and so on) you will hit problems when init is changed, 
when there are subtle changes in /etc/init.d (or /etc/rc.d) and 
associated symlinks, when your roster of predefined users and groups 
changes, when /etc/udev changes, when your boot loader changes... I 
could go on.

The real problem is not the underlying OS (i.e. the Linux kernel, X and 
so on) or the lower-level libraries (libc, gtk2) but is the layers of 
middleware that have accumulated and have to be "just right" before 
large-scale applications like the various Mozilla derivatives (Firefox, 
Seamonkey) will compile and run. FPC and Lazarus, by comparison, will 
build on almost anything.

-- 
Mark Morgan Lloyd
markMLl .AT. telemetry.co .DOT. uk

[Opinions above are the author's, not those of his employers or colleagues]