The atrocious state of binary compatibility on Linux and how to address it

Summary

The Atrocious State Of Binary Compatibility on Linux and How To Address It. By Dale Weiler GitHub Time To Read: ~30 Minutes Last Updated: Monday, March 17th 2025 Summary Linux binary compatibility is plagued by one thing that is often overlooked when evaluating shipping software on Linux. This article will deconstruct how to arrive to that conclusion, how to address it when shipping software today and what needs to be done to actually fix it. Table of contents Introduction At JangaFX, we make several products that run natively on Linux. We love the flexibility and power that Linux offers our developers, but shipping software on it is a whole different challenge. Linux is an incredibly powerful platform, but when it comes to shipping software, it can feel like a minefield. Unlike other operating systems, Linux isn’t just one system—it’s a chaotic mix of different services, libraries, and even philosophies. Every distribution does things a little differently, and that means the same executable that works flawlessly on one system might completely break on another. This shouldn’t even be a problem. The Linux kernel itself has maintained relatively stable system calls. But everything built on top of it changes constantly in ways that break compatibility, making it incredibly frustrating to ship software that "just works." If you’re developing for Linux, you’re not targeting a single platform—you’re navigating an ecosystem that has evolved without much concern for binary compatibility. Some of us, coming from the game industry before moving into VFX have dealt with this problem before. Shipping games on Linux has always been a nightmare, and the same issues persists regardless of industry. In this article, We're going to explain why we think containers are the wrong approach, how we build and ship Linux software in a way that actually works, what we think is responsible for Linux's binary compatibility problem and what needs to change to fix it. The latter part of this ar...