Compatibility Issues Across Linux Distributions?

CarrotLord asks: "Looking at the recent release of IBM's Small Business Suite for Linux got me wondering about distribution compatibility and standards. Personally, I run Debian, and am considering a move to Progeny. However, I am concerned by the fact that many products (particularly commercial ones) are available for only a particular subset of distributions (usually RedHat, Mandrake, SuSE, TurboLinux and Caldera, but rarely Debian-based distributions or the BSDs). What is the current state of play, particularly in regards to tools for developers to enable them to create and test installation packages for various distributions?" Such a tool would go a long way in removing the force behind the "Linux fragmentation" argument that most of Linux's detractors often refer to.

"How are the LSB and the FSSTND affecting consistency between distros? What about RPM and APT? What tools are there available for developers of software to ensure that their software runs on the widest variety of systems? Is there some software development or packaging tool to assist developers in making distribution-independant software, so they can create files in dpkg, RPM and tgz formats for any distribution without much additional effort on their part? What about tools to test their software installation on individual distributions, and assist with the resolution of problems? Should this be up to the individual distributions, or should be have a unified approach?"

Comments

Re:Well...

[Chang]

>I have only seen a selection for a .deb file once

There is a reason for that. Most open source stuff can be grabbed directly from a Debian mirror using apt-get. This is why you don't see as much stuff on the web in .deb. It's available and usually even easier to get and install than the .rpm or .tgz equivalents, but just not as visible.

Commercial Linux software is a different story - it's pretty clear that .rpm and in particular RedHat are the current standards.