A plea to devs to fix the Linux 3.06 patch

[PhilD]

The latest (3.06) patch, in the Linux version, changed something subtle - the version of the standard C library (glibc) it requires. As a consequence, players who don't have a quite-up-to-date version of the library installed (I just checked the GNU page: 2.4 was apparently released around March, 2006; anybody with a system that's older than that is likely to not have upgraded their libc, as it's a perfect example of "if it ain't broke, don't fix it") cannot use the patch. As a consequence, this prevents them from playing in PBEM games. And as the standard C library is a pretty critical part of the system, upgrading it the wrong way could clearly break the whole system install; it doesn't look like there are pre-packaged versions of glibc 2.4 for my current Linux distribution (which is Ubuntu 6.06; again, not the latest, but 6.06 indicates it was released June, 2006; it's not exactly an antique piece of software).

I would like to know if the move to glibc 2.4 was really necessary. If the devs come up and say there was a good, feature-required, reason for the move to 2.4, then I'll stop complaining and try to find a way to upgrade my glibc. But if it isn't, it would really, really be appreciated if they could recompile a version which is compliant with what is announced on the Shrapnel website as "System Requirements" (namely: libc >= 2.1.92)...

(And note that, for the previous patch to 3.04, the initially distributed Linux version was missing a file or two - I'd like to be sure the patch testing is done properly and equally on all supported platforms...)