Young, Ed wrote:
>
> I may be out to lunch on the following but I believe we're zeroing in on
> something anyway. That's what lists are all about, right?
>
> One thing I've gotten out of the thread is that RH and SUSE, (etc) are not
> adhering to standards but have the market share. Therefore comercial apps
> provide distributions of their software for those Linux distributions. Since
> Debian does not follow RH or SUSE, it does not follow the "standard" set by
> those dists, and therefore there's something of a deviation between us and
> them.
No, RH appears to be trying to follow the standards, such as they
exist, and so is Debian. The problem has more to do with the existing
file system standard (and others) not being enough to solve some
fundamental problems that still exist. The simple (for me) response is
to say to go to http://forum.freshmeat.net/threads/lsb/ and read some of
these editorials about LSB and why its needed.
> My questions are:
> How is debian different w/r/t RH/SUSE?
>
> Is this difference fundamental (filestructure diffs? ) or simpley different
> packaging schemes. (maybe not "simply")
There are (or have been in the past) some problems with file system
structures, like /etc/init.d, or maybe the entire /etc tree. I don't
have an RH system to check, but based on comments in the above
editorials, /etc should be a good example of a place to find differences
between dists.
You are right though, the fundamental difference is the package
manager, and yes, its not just "simply". The deb system is technically
superior to rpm (IMHO) and a number of us Debian users aren't keen on
the idea of being forced to use the existing rpm system. Now if it was
upgraded to work as well as deb, perhaps a hybrid of the two systems,
then . . .
> Like the Netscape package installer, can't other commercial apps be
> installed on a debian system?
Sure, progs that can be installed to somehwhere in usr/local and don't
mess (or need to mess) with other parts of the system work just fine.
Netscape proves that it is possible even now, with a little work. The
idea is to make it easy for newbies to do things like installing NS, and
for software vendors to know that they have only to package their
product in a common accepted format, and adhere to a minimal set of
rules about the assumptions the software can make about the rest of the
system, to reach virtually everyone who is running Linux.
>
> [massive snip]
>
--
Ed C.
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