On Fri, Sep 17, 2010 at 16:10, Anton Aylward wrote:
A shake-out that resulted in a single package manager format and file location/library/naming standards that EVERYONE adhered to would be nice. I hate the mess we have now with multiple package managers, and each distro putting core files in its own seemingly random locations, and giving core library files different names (even though they are the same).
You mean like Microsoft?
Heck no, there's so little standardization there on that single OS it's laughable. dlls scattered all over the place, config files anywhere and everywhere, installers are MSI, EXE and I dunno.. whatever else they like to use. [snip]
Compared to what we had back in the days when SCO was the dominant form of small system/SMB *NIX, we're doing pretty good. Most intel-based Linux desktop and server systems can handle RPMs (you don't want to think about the version that run on embedded applications!).
But.. you can only sometimes take an RPM that is say.. built for RedHat and install it on openSUSE because.. even between RPM based distros we can't get the file naming sorted out. RH calls the lib XYZ.so.1 and openSUSE calls it XYZ-1.so.1 even though they are identical (or seem to be). Then you throw in DEBs and trying to alien back and forth so you don't break your respective package database... and then --scripts is a recipe for disaster some times... Then you include PGK from Solaris, whatever Gentoo likes to call the source they emerge... and... and.. Then you have poor vendor X who is willing to consider making a Linux port of their WonderApp 1.0.... until they look at the clusterhump that is package managers, file locations, and file names... and they end up saying screw it... then IF we're lucky, they build a DEB specifically for Ubuntu... that won't even alien to RPM for openSUSE (eg... Cedega, the first releases of Google Voice etc etc etc). There have been attempts at standardizing, but.. everyone just ignored it and went on their merry way. Do things work as they are... sure, we're humming along here... but... in terms of 3rd party application vendors.... they don't wanna step into the maelstrom. If things were just a bit more standardised... evn down to say.. DEB and RPM... where an RPM could be installed and work on any RPM based distro (assuming the deps are met of course)... which isn't the case right now.
Lets see. What car do you drive?
I don't... I walk now. After the dealer wanted 11,000€ for a rebuilt engine for my Porsche, I sold it and I've been using my feet and public transit ever since :-) C. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org