> The advantage of doing this being that the old application will now support all modern audio/video formats (e.g. ffmpeg) and the new graphical and audio subsystems on linux (e.g. sdl), as well as whatever security fixes.
That's the theory. In practise, it just means small app developers putting up with:
1) #ifdefs for different versions of same libraries in different distros
2) distro specific bug reports for an operating system with less than 2% user base
3) binary releases that target just 'Linux' being out of question for most proprietary applications / apps that can't/won't be included in distro repositories for various reasons.
It's not as if distro maintainers will test your random little application every time they update ffmpeg anyway. It's the users, for whom the application breaks.
That's the theory. In practise, it just means small app developers putting up with:
1) #ifdefs for different versions of same libraries in different distros
2) distro specific bug reports for an operating system with less than 2% user base
3) binary releases that target just 'Linux' being out of question for most proprietary applications / apps that can't/won't be included in distro repositories for various reasons.
It's not as if distro maintainers will test your random little application every time they update ffmpeg anyway. It's the users, for whom the application breaks.