Re: [DEBIAN] Standardization?
On Sat, 9 Aug 1997, George Bonser wrote:
> Is there any REALLY GOOD reason for stuff like this? I know that the next
> distribution is likely to cause a lot of turmoil with the libc6 thing and
> a lot of work needs to go into recompliling the world but how about if we
> have a look at this in some future release.
1, History
2, Sound programming practice
3. Standards compliance - POSIX and the newer standards.
> Maybe we should sit down, take a hard look at some of the other popular
> distributions (Slackware, RedHat, Caldera), look at how they have some
> common things set up and see if some proposals can be created to take the
> best concepts from the distributions and try to come up with a more
> unified approach to basic system layout issues.
Commercial distributions like RedHat won't normally change: Linux FT and
SuSE were _obliged_ to change to .rpm because this is rapidly becoming a
standard. Try persuading Patrick Volkerding / Walnut Creek that all the
Slackware they sell is broken ?? IMHO Debian works - I'll tell the world
to use it but I can't expect them all to listen.
> I use the rc.* stuff as a basic example because if an application needs to
> update an init script or create one, you basicly need completely different
> code for each installation script.
If you compile from source, modify the makefile: if the file is binary
only, write a wrapper - if you can't modify the binary by adding a
wrapper / get the source -DON'T USE IT. Use GPL only unless
absolutely forced to do otherwise.
> Until the different distributions come closer together in this regard, I
> fear that you will see commercial applications coming only for commercial
> distributions that can pay developers to create the stuff based on their
> format. This may cause other distributions with wither on the vine over
> time as good applications became easy to find for the other distributions.
This just happened with Linux-FT 1.2. In the longer term, I suspect that
Linux may also have two or three major players who will have to exist in
parallel and accept incompatibilities above kernel level: at least we all
have a common kernel -in the commercial world,try getting the
same binaries and environment under BSDi/SCO/DEC/HP !
> Chances of getting the source for a commercial app and being able to
> custom build it for another distribution would be pretty slim.
Commercial apps won't give you source: the companies may be persuaded to
build for at most two of the most popular current flavours e.g. Netscape
for virtually everybody but Microsoft for SCO only.
> George Bonser
All good ideas, all worthy of long discussion, but probably doomed.
Linux has been evolving along parallel distributions for too long
for hardened users to give up their favourite FS layouts / preferred
features. In the long run, people go with their favourite distributions
mainly for ease of use. Having tried most of the others, I stick with
Debian because the people who develop it are accessible, know what
they are talking about and don't introduce unnecessary features -
signal to noise ratio on this list is also very low.
Andy
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