Re: File location differences between Debian and other 'X'nix's?
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On Fri, 24 Sep 1999, John Gay wrote:
> As you can probably tell, I'm still climbing a very steep learning curve
> right now. But, I've made quite some progress and am very proud of the
> progress I've made. I don't think I would have learned nearly as much if
> I'd chosen an easier distribution like RedHat or OpenLinux. I'd just
> like to know what the reasoning is behind the directory layout used by
> Debian and why most other 'X'nix's seem to use completely different
> layouts?
>
First off, Debian is definitely no more difficult than Redhat or Caldera.
Personally, I find the Redhat package management system very clunky and
nowhere near as elegant as Debian's. For some reason, people on this list
continue to propogate the myth that Debian is difficult. I don't even
think the Debian installation process is any more difficult; it's just not
as pretty as the Redhat install (I can't comment on any other
distributions, except an old slackware version that won't help you at
all).
You are not actually seeing differences between Debian and other
distributions. You'd find that any distribution would install them in
mostly the same place. What you're seeing is that the individual software
package wants to install itself into /usr/local. This is very common, and
it works well with the directory layout guidlines of Debian and most other
distributions. The distributions will install the packaged software in
/usr/bin /usr/lib /usr/X11R6/bin, etc. Software installed manually (i.e.
by compiling the source and running 'make install') will usually go into
/usr/local/. This keeps you locally built software separate from the
distribution's software, which makes things more managable.
Hope that clears some stuff up for you.
Noah
PGP public key available at
http://lynx.dac.neu.edu/home/httpd/n/nmeyerha/mail.html
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