[pompino]

Just to put things in perspective - MacOS forces you to run on their update treadmill for the OS, and you can't even update your xcode dev environment if you refuse. Ditto with Linux, you can't refuse OS updates if you use a package manager because eventually you can't update anything without accepting all the dependencies. Windows for all its warts did do something well with binary compatibility. I am happy as a pig in poop with my work supplied LTSC install.

[hot_gril]

MacOS doesn't force updates for general users. But if you want to run the latest Xcode, yeah you need the latest OS.

[pompino]

Its funny that a compiler forces you to update your OS.

[viraptor]

Sorry, but the Linux part doesn't make sense. If you want to update system components from the system repository, it makes sense that the dependencies are rolled into it. But if you don't want to upgrade everything, you don't have to. Install a specific app version from flatpak, download binaries, or compile it yourself for your current system. You have so many ways to do this - same as you're doing on windows.

[pompino]

>Install a specific app version from flatpak, download binaries, or compile it yourself for your current system.

Then you can't have those dependencies managed by a package manager, which means you'll constantly be compiling (and dealing with conflicts yourself). This is not a viable path forward as it seems to be presented here.

>You have so many ways to do this - same as you're doing on windows.

On Windows I copy a binary and run it w/o giving a crap about the OS updates. Vastly different workflows for it to be called "same".