On Mon, 2003-11-17 at 15:36, Daryl Herzmann wrote:
> Hi Mark,
>
> (to the group: perhaps unidata needs a wx-it list or something, so that
> LDM can avoid these somewhat OT discussions. pc-os is there, but how many
> others are there? I don't mind seeing them on ldm-users since so many
> folks are here and it avoids having yet another list to subscribe to)
>
> I have to defend RH for this one.
>
> On Mon, 17 Nov 2003, Mark J. Laufersweiler wrote:
>
> >I am not a big fan of RPM's since once you build from source, you may
> >break the dependencies. This in part due to RH not using the standard
> >locations for files and configs.
>
> What part of the LSB is RH not adhering to? bugzilla references?
I find this annoying as well. The problem is that when you think of the
Unix base, it is composed of very few software packages. Look at
Solaris where the base only consists of Bourne shell, a couple of simple
editors and text manipulation tools, and the administrative programs to
run the OS. Everything else gets dumped into /opt and /usr/pkg. You go
to other Unix systems and everything outside of the base goes into
/usr/local.
The problem with Linux is that very little of Linux is considered part
of the Unix base. 95% of the tools we consider part of the standard
Linux base would be considered an add-on on every other Unix system. So
if you install these from source, they'll install into /usr/local or
/opt or somewhere strange.
Red Hat has tried to consolidate these tools into the standard base
(installing into /usr/bin and /usr/lib). I like this because you know
where it is going on Red Hat. But if you try to upgrade from a non-Red
Hat source or build from source, its going somewhere else. A good
example was Mozilla. I install Mozilla with the Red Hat base which puts
it into /usr/bin and /usr/lib/mozilla. Then I upgrade from the
mozilla.org site and it puts everything in /usr/local/bin and
/usr/local/mozilla. Then I have two copies and I have to remove the old
Red Hat install. Then when I upgrade Red Hat versions, it installs a
new copy of Mozilla back into /usr/bin and /usr/lib and once again I
have two copies. Another bad one was Open Office. These are
multi-megabyte packages that could easily fill a filesytem with obsolete
installs.
I just wish there was a standardization of installs between the Unix and
Linux distributions. Also, RPM doesn't seem intelligent enough to check
for existing distributions of software, especially if it wasn't
installed with RPM. I like putting stuff in /usr/bin but 90% of the
Linux/Unix tools won't put it there. You end up with a cluttered
filesystem of hundreds of installs and obsolete packages. This is where
Windows has a strong advantage on Linux.
With Red Hat going to Fedora, I just see this getting even worse. It
looks like most of the problems with the first release of Fedora is
negotiating the location of files, libraries and drivers in the
filesystem. Resolving this involves a ton of grunt work reworking
source code bases. Red Hat did a good job in this but I just don't feel
Fedora is going to be as diligent. At least their first release seems
to prove that.
With this in mind, I can see why Red Hat is going paid license only. My
only problem is that the license fee is much higher than what we pay for
Solaris. This could end much of our Linux development unless we find an
equivalent cheaper Linux distro that our customers are approved to use.
--
Dan Vietor <devo@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Unisys
