Different Distroes for Different Folks
I vaguely remember complaining years ago about needing different installs for Win 95 and Win 98. Then I heard a term "multi-platform" come from Microsoft like it meant something.  When Microsoft said multi-platform they meant it ran on multiple versions of Windows. That always pissed me off. I wanted things that ran on Mac, Linux and Windows. I do not own a Mac, I just think they are cool.
Now I'm running into the same issues with Linux.

Red Hat 9	32 bit
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3	32 bi6
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4	32 bit
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3	64 bit
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4	64 bit
Fedora Core 3	32 bit
Fedora Core 4	32 bit
Fedora Core 5	32 bit
Fedora Core 3	64 bit
Fedora Core 4	64 bit
Fedora Core 5	64 bit

Multiply that by different kernel versions and different platforms like PPC and different compiler versions suddenly you are in a pickle. It wasn't that long ago that only the 32 bit part really mattered. Those days are gone. For the longest time, Red Hat was the only game in town. Now, you have SuSi owned by Novel and FreeBSD in Europe and elsewhere. There are tons of other distributions on top of those.
I've noticed a movement in the Linux world to support packagers like RPM/YUM or DEB/APT-GET. Something has got to give. If you truly wanted to support all the different combinations you would need to compile on like 35 different machines every time you had a release.
Perhaps you understand why I switched from Ubuntu to Fedora at the house. It was to eliminate DEB/APT-GET and a whole other platform. I miss the ease and user base help of Ubuntu. FC isn't bad for community support. It just seems like there are more steps involved in everything you do. That is inherent in Linux though.