XFCE Desktop background cannot load Jpeg any longer

[Brian J. Tarricone]

On 07/30/2009 09:11 AM, Evaggelos Balaskas wrote:
> I never understood why thunar or ristretto (or whatever) have a
> dependency to /usr/lib/libjpeg.so.7 or /usr/lib/libjpeg.so.62 and not to
>
> /usr/lib/libjpeg.so

Because that's how dynamic linking on most unixes works. At link time, 
the linker encodes the library's name ("jpeg" in this case), and, if the 
library has a soname version, the major version (7 or 62, in this case).

The entire point of it is to allow library authors to break the ABI of 
their library without having applications linked to that library fail in 
strange, hard to debug ways.  This way you can also have multiple 
versions of the library installed and update/recompile apps that use 
them to the new version at your leisure.

If you're compiling packages from source on your machine, you have to be 
aware of this.  If you're not, or aren't willing to keep up with changes 
like this, then it's easy: don't install your own packages, and make 
sure you only use your OS's package manager.

	-brian