Ex-Microsoftie: Free Software Will Kill Redmond (ComputerWorld)

Just to be clear, you forgot to say that all the versions listed at http://www.opera.com/browser/download/ does not proof anything about the binary compatibility on classic GNU/Linux systems vs. the binary compatibility on a classic Windows. Opera optimise for "every" distro because they can. But their "Other/Static" will run everywhere. The Windows version is equivalent to the "Other/Static" Linux version, that's all. Windows does not even have a good packaging system, yet alone useful shared libraries (Microsoft recommends that every program redistributes its own libC!)

Believe it or not, but there are tons of binary only proprietary software (most of the time professional) for GNU/Linux that runs fine on pretty much every distro under the sun -- with only one version of the binaries.

You fail to understand that the diversity you point at, thinking its bad, is indeed something _more_ than what can be done in the Windows world. That is not even mandatory : you just _can_ do it. If you don't want to, just build as you would build for Windows, shipping every library bits along with the executable.