I'm considering dumping boost as a dependency... atm the only thing that I really need is shared_ptr<>, and I can get that from std::tr1, available in gcc suite 4.*
No, on my debian systems I have to install it. But any half-decent system admin should be able to figure out how to install it.
Edit: to be specific it is not always installed by default, but it should be available for most every distro.
It's available on Fedora, installable via "yum" if you didn't pick "Development System" as your default install set. "yum search gcc" to get the package to install.
These days, I believe most Linux distros do not ship with the development system by default. But I'm pretty sure g++ v4 is the 'standard' development C++ compiler if you install the C++ development environment at all. g++ v3 is usually just available as a special install. For openSUSE 11, gcc 4.3 is the current package installed when you pick the Base Development pattern.
That depends on what you mean by ship? If you download and burn a CD or DVD, it will almost certainly be available, but not necessarily installed by default. Some distros (e.g. Fedora) allow choices during the install which will install development tools, but a default install generally does not include them. They are easily installed using whatever package management system the distro supports. Ubuntu includes a package called build-essential which installs gcc, g++, make, etc. so apt-get install build-essential is the first step for doing development on Ubuntu.
Ah sorry, I see that my question was not clear. I'm just wondering if distros package gcc 4 nowadays or some still have only version 3. I know that on most it is not installed by default etc.