what cd download ? Jargon busting.

[Rodolfo J. Paiz]

At 08:29 11/6/2003, you wrote:
> > The SRPMS discs are the source code RPMS.  The i386 discs are the ones
> > used for the install.
>And yarrow and rawhide and so on and so forth.
>
>Is there a Redhat / Fedora /Linux jargon busting page please?
>The tla's that are flowing on this list I guess warrant one.

So what's a TLA? ;-)

         * RPM = Red Hat Package Manager, the standard way to build and 
distribute any application for Red Hat Linux or other distributions that 
now use the same format. This includes Fedora and Mandrake, possibly others 
of which I might be unaware. RPM is also the name for the application and 
command with which you install, upgrade, query, or remove an RPM package, 
and you often refer to a package as "the Apache RPM" meaning the RPM file 
for that application.

         * SRPMS = "Source" RPM, contains the source code for the package 
in case you want to read it or modify it. You do not need any SRPMS to 
install or use the software.

         * i386 = The entire x86 line of computers and processors, from the 
Intel 386 forward all the way to Intel Pentium 4 and Athlon chips. All 
those are compatible with i386 instruction sets, the "lowest common 
denominator".

         * Rawhide = The bleeding edge, Rawhide is where the next version 
of packages are developed and tested. It is usually sort of stable, but on 
any given day any given package MIGHT be badly broken where the programmers 
are trying to add something or change something. Do not use on production 
machines, use at your own risk, etc.

         * Yarrow, Shrike, Psyche, et al. = The names given to individual 
distributions issued by Red Hat for reference and easy memory. People often 
forget whether they are using 8.0 (Psyche), 9 (Shrike), or Fedora Core 1 
(Yarrow), but the names are harder to forget. Note that other operating 
systems do the same thing, including other Linux distros and Microsoft 
(various versions of Windows have been named Chicago, Cairo, etc.).


-- 
Rodolfo J. Paiz
rpaiz at simpaticus.com