application v.s. distribution

Compatible is the key problem in distributions. Why many companies use redhat enterprise linux? Because many applications are verified in this environment, using these distributions will be less problems than other distributions. If a application is verified in RHEL 3, mostly it can still run under RHEL 4. Because Redhat provides backward compatible library, the application can still run in this environment. If we can use this compatible library in other distributions, we can run application without compatible problem and the function is verified. I don't like redhat enterprise linux. I use debian sarge with redhat 8 compatible library. In this way, we can run many EDA tools in debian.