> Sounds like RedHad changed the install dir in their distribution, and then the
> developers RPM put it in their intended place which gave you two copies.
>
> If the code is something which Mandrake shipped on their install CD, then
> generally they do a good job maintaining their MDK files which you can access
> from the MandrakeUpdate program. It also knows what are the suppported packages
Mike, there are some similar problems in Mandrake (which would exist if
the same developer RPMs were used with Red Hat). A good deal of the
problem lies in the distro folks deciding that some of the third party
stuff they're distributing is part of the operating system, not a "local
install" application. Netscape is a case in point. Both RH and LM
install it in /usr/bin. A default install from the developer put its in
/opt/netscape. "Typically" such programs should be in /usr/local/bin but
the Linux community seems unsettled in this regard. Why is unclear as the
descriptions of what the directories /usr/local/bin and /usr/bin are for
is stated loud and clear even within books that are explicitly about
Linux.
The developers don't seem to be reading these books either which is
probably what drives the distros to try to solve the problems. One would
expect, in a pure Unix interpretation, for Acrobat reader to be installed
in /usr/local/bin. The reason is that acroread would then be on the
default path set up in all Linuxes. But Adobe doesn't see it that way and
instead sticks it in /usr/local/bin/Acroread4.0 (at least the rpm I had
did this).
> which need to be updated for the package you choose. For example, I wanted to
> see if SAMBA 2.0.7 fixed my Win2K client problems, ran Mandrake update,
> selected the SAMBA files, and the update program found package requirements
> about three levels deep - PAM, C, and some other stuff. In short, I had SAMBA
> up and running in just a couple hours after a clean install of Mandrake 7.1 -
> very nice!
SAMBA is an app that's easy to consider as part of the networking package
of Linux. Thus there should not be any problems. It seems that the
problem comes with programs that are applications where there are many
choices (eg - browsers). The one(s) chosen by the distro to be included
are often dumped into /usr/bin rather than where their developers have
them set up.
In the end, I haven't seen any differences between LM and RH in this
regard (experience limited to RH6.2 and LM7.0, 7.1, 7.2).
Cheers --- Larry
