[opensource-dev] Building GTK+ and friends with autobuild new tools

[Mike Chase]

On 07/24/2015 04:16 AM, Henri Beauchamp wrote:
> On Thu, 23 Jul 2015 21:47:36 -0500, Nicky Perian wrote:
>
>> Thanks for taking time to provide a thoughtful reply.
>> I agree, it is not a viewer for older distributions.
> I don't consider 3 years old distributions as "old" ones... If you do,
> then What would you say about Windows XP, Vista, or even Windows 7 ?
> :-D
Windows XP is EOL and anyone using it is asking for serious issues with 
security problems which won't ever be fixed.   If you're running an 
older platform you should be grateful the vendor is willing to backport 
and handle security fixes.  But when they call it EOL you only have 
yourself to blame if you continue running it and have issues.

In the Linux space for most distros there is no "vendor" to even 
backport fixes since it community maintained in many cases.  For Ubuntu 
if you are running an LTS release then yes its supported for a longer 
period. Which means you'll have the benefit of security fixes. 12.04 is 
April 2017. Should you upgrade to 14.04 LTS? Probably yes if only to get 
updates on apps that aren't simply security fixes.

You can argue that a viewer should support older releases and to some 
degree I could agree with that.  Truth is though that the hardware 
requirements of the viewer also change and anyone running on a machine 
more than a few years old isn't going to have the experience intended 
with the current software tech.  So I personally prefer that releases 
target .. the actual target.  Which IMO is 3-4years max.  Hence as I 
said I think you can argue in the ubuntu case 12.04 but nothing earlier 
and for Windows I see absolutely zero benefit supporting Windows XP 
especially if its holding back support for newer releases.

Just my 2 cents

Mike