On Tuesday 10 June 2003 1:03 pm, Jonathan Shilling wrote:

...

If the package would include the necessary libraries to install and run, rather than being dependentant on what the distro may already come with, should resolve this issue. For the most part just about every package I have come across I could compile and execute on Mandrake, SuSE, Red Hat, Debian, and *BSD. There is only the matter of porting the libraries. Jonathan

Sorry, but I ardently disagree here. This is what all the Windoze apps do, and is IMHO what's been known to cause the DLL-hell that anybody whose ever used windoze has battled too many times.

Now, I suppose I might relax my position _if_ it could install these libs in a non-shared (ie app specific) location. Instead of installing a different libfoo.so in /usr/lib, package bar installed in, say, /opt/bar, and installed /opt/bar/lib/libfoo.so and /opt/bar/bin/bar is a shell script that sets LD_LIBRARY_PATH before starting the _real_ /opt/bar/bin/bar.bin. Even

One of the things that is drawing me to Linux is the dramatically reduced disk space and memory needed for the OS, apps, utils, and everything else that I want to install under Linux. Unlike many on this list, I'm a neophyte about compiling stuff under Linux but not new to writing apps. I've written client/server, assembler, C, C++, and Fortran under Windows, and have no issue with rolling up my sleeves and getting dirty. But, I'm running into the same library problems as the professor whilst learning the ropes in Linux. But what I find (along with your comments) curious is that how much of this is going to result in a growing base of files to accomodate the various distros? If I need to install a program that is to run on Redhat and SuSE, but each distro has its own little quirks about required files, then the app now carries baggage for both distros. Hopefully, the app vendor's install routine is smart enough to install only what it needs for my distro, but that adds overhead for the developer to keep the needs separate. Make sense? My own little crystal ball was hoping to see one Linux kernal and also the next layer API, and folks write to that. This baselined kernal and APIs would be maintained by some central governing Linux body?? I'm not talking about Mr. Torvalds and the kernal, but something that addresses these very issues mentioned here instead of Redhat running out like it has. Just my 2 cents worth from a newbee..... -Jeff ----- Original Message ----- From: "Nick LeRoy" Newsgroups: Suse.Linux-e To: Sent: Tuesday, June 10, 2003 2:20 PM Subject: Re: [SLE] Microsoft Vs. Linux Desktop Battle Heats Up then,

however, I'd say this should only be done _when neccessary_.

-Nick

-- Check the headers for your unsubscription address For additional commands send e-mail to suse-linux-e-help@suse.com Also check the archives at http://lists.suse.com Please read the FAQs: suse-linux-e-faq@suse.com