On Tue, Nov 24, 2009 at 01:44:36PM -0700, Aaron Toponce wrote: > > Do you have another example besides Apache, because Debian adheres to > the Unix filesystem locations more closely than others. Off the top of > my head: > > Debian vs. RHEL > /etc/default/ vs. /etc/sysconfig/ > /boot/grub/menu.lst vs. /boot/grub/grub.conf > /etc/rc?.d/ vs. /etc/rc.d/rc?.d/ > /etc/init.d/ vs. /etc/rc.d/init.d/ > /var/www/ vs. /var/www/html/
I couldn't find any of the items from this list in the FHS, so it's hard to argue that one is more right than the other. According to the FHS [1], both Debian/Ubuntu and Fedora/RHEL both have it wrong for /var/www (it should instead be /srv/www). Grub is a bad example because there is no upstream (Grub 1 died and splintered a long time ago), so there's no way to measure "vanillaness". The /etc/default, /etc/sysconfig, /etc/rc?.d, and /etc/init.d directories are pretty distro-specific (and Fedora has both /etc/rc?.d and /etc/rc.d/rc?.d anyway). The main point for me is how individual packages work. I'm bothered in a few ways by the interactive configuration updater that's built into apt/dpkg. It would always ask me questions at the wrong time, I occasionally lost custom configuration by selecting the wrong option, and it made it hard to get the pristine default configuration file from upstream. Redhat used to overwrite config files in a different but also annoying way, but I haven't had that sort of problem in several years. There have been several "scandalous" disagreements between Debian and upstream, such as Iceweasel and OpenSSL, but for the most part it was a bunch of little differences that bothered me (unfortunately, it's been so long since I've used it heavily that I can't remember specific examples other than the config file issue). > You would like Arch then. It takes upstream, writes a small config for > installing it, compiles and packages it. Rarely is anything patched, > added or changed. Simplicity is king with Arch, and its success is > showing many prefer that philosophy. Fedora has a very similar policy. There are some definite benefits to keeping close to upstream. As many people have now mentioned, these sorts of changes are really a matter of personal preference. There will always be things that bother you in any particular distribution, and you have to find whichever one most closely follows your preferences. Thanks for sharing your preferences and observations. This has definitely been enlightening for me. [1] http://www.pathname.com/fhs/pub/fhs-2.3.html -- Andrew McNabb http://www.mcnabbs.org/andrew/ PGP Fingerprint: 8A17 B57C 6879 1863 DE55 8012 AB4D 6098 8826 6868 -------------------- BYU Unix Users Group http://uug.byu.edu/ The opinions expressed in this message are the responsibility of their author. They are not endorsed by BYU, the BYU CS Department or BYU-UUG. ___________________________________________________________________ List Info (unsubscribe here): http://uug.byu.edu/mailman/listinfo/uug-list
