I'd like comments about an overall problem I find with Linux software that I hope you can help me with. The problem is this:

When I install a Linux distribution (in my case, Mandrake 10.0 Official), I want it to be stable and to use it for a long time without needing to upgrade. I get to know it well, and I'm willing to give up features that don't appear until later versions. By this I mean basic features like using KDE 3.2 instead of the leading edge KDE 3.4, or not using the latest kernel.

However, I want to be able to upgrade individual programs. When some new Tetris game comes along, I'd like to be able to run it.

However, when I install this new game (or whatever program), it wants to rely on newer libraries than I have. For example, in Mandrake I use "urpmi" (I think it's "apt-get" in Debian, "yum" in Fedora, "yast" in SuSE, "emerge" in Gentoo, etc.) to grab (say) Tetris-v2, and suddenly it says, "To use Tetris-v2, you also need to install Graphics-Library-v3.001, but you only have Graphics-Library-v3.0!" Well, I'm sure that the game itself doesn't actually *need* Graphics-Library-v3.001, just that whoever compiled the RPM package happened to use v3.001, and so now I, too, need v3.001. So now, I have to upgrade to Mandrake 10.1 just so I can install Tetris-v2! And this upgrade cycle will never end: when Tetris-v2.1 comes out, all of a sudden I have to go to Mandrake 10.2 (or Mandriva LE 2005 or whatever they want to call it).

But I don't want to install Graphics-Library-v3.001, because all my other programs use the older v3.0 just fine, and I'm not going to break everything just by overwriting the library with a new version.

One possibility is that I compile my own version. I get the source code for Tetris-v2 and do the "configure; make; make install" thing. I've never really done this before, and it sounds rather scary, but I'm getting close to the point where I'm forced to do this. Some questions: Does this work? Usually? What happens if something goes wrong --will I be able to tell how to fix it? Is it easy?

But what I can't understand is: why can't there be multiple versions of libraries? Why can't I have Graphics-Library-v3.001 *and* v3.0 at the same time? Apparently the answer is that the library files have the same name (e.g. a file in both of the Graphics-Library versions might both be called '/lib/graphics_library.so.3' so they can't both exist at the same time), but why??? Also: when you run that Tetris-v2 game, there had better be a file named '/lib/graphics_library.so.3' on the computer; if you rename it to something slightly different, like '/lib/graphics_library.so.3_modifiedversion', all hell breaks loose! Why??? Why can't software look for a file named, say, './Tetris_graphics_library', which would be a symbolic link to wherever the real library is located? Why am I locked into using a specific library with a specific filename?

I'm rambling a bit, but I'm sort of thinking out loud. I want to break out of this upgrade cycle. Your comments are welcomed.

Manually installing isn't that scary and it will work. It checks for dependencies as well btw. So if the program really needs a newer library you still need to upgrade. You might want to search for a program you run to tell your urpmi that you installed this package from source. I'm not sure if it's there but there's such a thing for debian and it can be nice that you can later uninstall using the distro's tools.

Renaming the file to something slightly different will probably result in lots of different things making it really hard to figure out if you have the right things installed. If it was a symbolic link how would that solve a version numbers problem. The file it's linked to either has the right version or not.

I'm not sure how the packaging stuff works (or the maintainer), if they use the lowest version stuff needed so you don't have to upgrade or that they actually use what they like. I'd say you have a point but it's a drawback of using a package management. You can use it or not. Maybe you like a source distro better.

I don't think upgrading a single library will make your system less stable btw.