Re: Pine in Debian [Was:Debian vs Red Hat???]

[Ray Olszewski <ray@comarre.com>]

At 05:44 PM 5/20/00 +0200, Vitux wrote [in part]:

>Just a pitiful newbie wondering: I thought all *nix'es were
>supposed to use basically the same filesystem-structure. How
>come then, that Debian has proprietary placement of files?
>(maybe I've missed a point here, but isn't that part of the
>idea with *nix; to have a standard for the fs, which all
>flavors adhere to?!) I tend to feel uneasy using my buddy's
>SuSe-system; things don't work the way they do in Debian, and
>stuff is placed differently...
>Is Debian developing into a segregated OS, straying from the
>righteous path of *nix?!

Not at all. There is some "spread" developing across all the major Linux
distributions these days with respect to file placement. Start with *any* of
(say) Caldera, Debian, Red Hat, Slackware, and SuSE, and move to *any* of
the others, and you'll need to do some adjusting, sometimes considerable
adjusting. Less than if you move from any of them to (say) Solaris or HP-UX,
though.

It's hard to say whether "all *nix'es were supposed to use basically the
same filesystem-structure" or not. Depends on your definition of
"basically", I suppose. In any case, Debian isn't unusually bad in this
respect. Standardization in Unix/Linux has always been more of an ideal than
a realized practice.

These days, when I advise clients on Linux server setup and staffing, I
recommend that they make sure they hire sysadmin support that knows the
specific Linux distribution they plan to use (or to hire a sysadmin, then
let him or her pick the distribution) -- just knowing "Linux" isn't good
enough any more, in my opinion ... as your experience trying to move between
Debian and SuSE illustrates.

------------------------------------"Never tell me the odds!"---
Ray Olszewski                                        -- Han Solo
Palo Alto, CA           	 	         ray@comarre.com        
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