On Tue, 02 Feb 1999 zentara wrote:
alexander volovics wrote:
But I for one would not like to see fundamentally different Linuxes come >into existence. I would like to see essentialy one basis agreed upon and >adhered to. The distributions only putting different flavored icing on the same cake. And working together to promote and deliver a superior product.
I am very interested in hearing your opinions on these matters and I do >think
Should we users make our voice heard with respect to LSB? Can we leave it to the companies? Do we even want a commercialy succesfull Linux?
It goes without saying that the point has been made for standardizing directory structures and config files. But I can use Midnight Commander on any distribution so far. Elf's run on all the machines, except for the annoying glibc problem.
I too compile and run programs like Lyx, Xisp, Enlightenment, etc. without any problems on both SuSE 5.3 and RH 5.2. But that is not the whole story: I professionaly use a program that does/did not compile without problems on RH but gave problems on SuSE because SuSE had an older version of 'readline' than RH and also an older (or other?) version of 'f2c' than RH. (Fortran progs compiling without problems on RH would give all kinds of errors on SuSE). Furthermore there were some changes necessary due to differing locations of files. At the moment I have a commercial Linux app that gives problems on both SuSE and RH. 'Strace' shows different things happening when trying to open files on both. You certainly know that RPM's made for SuSE (base) will not necessarily work on RH and vice versa (and I am not talking about libc-glibc) These are only minor irritations of course, often easily corrected. But what if these small differences start becoming larger? And think of commercial ISV's developing for Linux?
Also, if there were standards, it would slow down development because if there was something you really needed to change, you would need the consent of all your colleagues.
That depends on WHAT is standardized.
Currently, all the distros can do what they want, and let the distro "speak for itself". Who will set the standard? Will it be an "International Convention of Linux Developers", or a dictatorial proclamation from Linus Torvalds, or will it be Redhat ramming it down our throats?
The distros are (or should be) represented in the LSB project. I myself would not like everything 'fixed' or 'dictated' (I am an anarchist at heart) but on the other hand I use Linux for work=money=bread and I don't want to have to spend too much time with "unnecessary" tinkering and endless searches: Linux should be Linux. It is pretending to be 'grown up' now and not any longer (solely) a hackers plaything. Alexander ------------------------------------- Alexander Volovics Dept of Methodology & Statistics Maastricht University, Maastricht, NL ------------------------------------- - To get out of this list, please send email to majordomo@suse.com with this text in its body: unsubscribe suse-linux-e Check out the SuSE-FAQ at <A HREF="http://www.suse.com/Support/Doku/FAQ/"><A HREF="http://www.suse.com/Support/Doku/FAQ/</A">http://www.suse.com/Support/Doku/FAQ/</A</A>> and the archiv at <A HREF="http://www.suse.com/Mailinglists/suse-linux-e/index.html"><A HREF="http://www.suse.com/Mailinglists/suse-linux-e/index.html</A">http://www.suse.com/Mailinglists/suse-linux-e/index.html</A</A>>