RedHat, Fedora future?
M.Hockings
veeshooter at hockings.net
Thu Feb 5 22:15:20 UTC 2004
Robin Laing wrote:
> Christoph Wickert wrote:
>
>> Am Do, den 05.02.2004 schrieb Robin Laing um 16:50:
>>
>>> I like Fedora but I don't like that it doesn't follow the standards
>>> as laid down by the Filesystem Hierarchy Standard
>>> <http://www.pathname.com/fhs/index.html> for location of
>>> applications and files.
>>
>> Could you give an example?
>>
>> Christoph
>
> Install Mozilla in fedora and it installs in /usr/lib/mozilla-x
> Install OpenOffice in Fedora and it installs in /usr/lib/openoffice
>
> These are two major applications.
>
> Now install the binaries from either download site (non-rpm) and they
> will install in /opt, not /usr/lib .
>
> Looking at the fhs standards it states.
>
> [quote]
> /usr/lib : Libraries for programming and packages
> Purpose
>
> /usr/lib includes object files, libraries, and internal binaries that
> are not intended to be executed directly by users or shell scripts.
>
> Applications may use a single subdirectory under /usr/lib. If an
> application uses a subdirectory, all architecture-dependent data
> exclusively used by the application must be placed within that
> subdirectory.
> [/quote]
>
> and
>
> [quote]
> /opt : Add-on application software packages
> Purpose
>
> /opt is reserved for the installation of add-on application software
> packages.
>
> A package to be installed in /opt must locate its static files in a
> separate /opt/<package> or /opt/<provider> directory tree, where
> <package> is a name that describes the software package and <provider>
> is the provider's LANANA registered name.
> [/quote]
>
> From the standards it is clear that Fedora is installing OpenOffice
> and Mozilla in the wrong directories. I have not had a chance to
> check on a totally Fedora machine about various application ~/ config
> files.
>
> One reason that I am looking at this as being a problem is from
> trouble shooting. If an application is supposed to install in /opt
> and Fedora installs it in /usr/lib, online info for the common user
> can just confuse the user.
>
> Another concern of mine is in managing different OS's with common
> applications. Example between Gentoo and RedHat.
>
> What about shared directories and links between different versions of
> Linux. This could be an issue if different distros put configuration
> files in different directories. An example here is Open Office again.
> In the users directory is .openoffice that has a link to
> /usr/lib/openoffice/program/soffice
>
> Now if I want to share this /home partition between different distro's
> of Linux, the link could point to a non-existent file as OpenOffice
> will be installed in /opt/openoffice or /usr/local. Now how do I fix
> this problem easily?
>
> I do admit that Fedora is following the standard that states an
> application can be fully put in a subdirectory of /usr/lib but as I
> said earlier, if you download the binary from Mozilla and install it,
> then it will install in the /usr/local/mozilla directory. Same with
> OpenOffice or most other applications that I have installed without
> using RPM's.
>
> I for one want linux to become more mainstream but when I have
> problems and I can fix them it is one thing. When I try telling a new
> user that is trying Linux and he is finding that the documentation on
> the WWW site is pointing to a location that is not on his RH
> distribution, he starts wondering about the usefulness of this.
>
> An example of what I am saying here is on this page.
>
> http://www.mozilla.org/docs/end-user/guide/get-started.html#installing-on-linux
>
>
> It references /usr/local/mozilla/plugins whereas on Fedora it would be
> /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins.
>
> I may be nitpicking here but with reference to the article, I think it
> can become a problem in the scheme of things. I know around work
> since RH is dropping support for RH9 people are looking and trying
> different distros. As I was still on RH8, I became the first to try
> Fedora. I am also about to look at other distros. As my /home
> directory is on a NFS server, I have to look at compatibility between
> distros and this is one area that keeps showing up.
>
> I hope this explains my comments in detail enough to be discussed.
Personally I find this all very interesting as before reading this
thread I didn't even know that there was a spec about where to put
things! Here are a few randomish thoughts.
On Windows you will see the typical installer ask to put a new program
at "C:\Program Files\some-vendor-name" but you can change this to
"e:\where-ever-ya-want" and the program will still install. However it
now won't match the documentation -- does this confuse users too? (ans:
yes, even though they chose to put it there)
I must admit that on more than one occasion I have installed something
in Linux (via RPM and via "make install") and the docs indicate that it
would go to /usr/local/bin/pgm-name but I find it in
/usr/bin/pgm-name. What controls this? Is it an exported (or somehow
retrieved) system setting, the RPM builder, the makefile author, or
what? I have not viewed this an inhibitor to using RedHat, more like I
thought it was my inexperience with Linux leading me astray.
Lastly, I have installed IBM's WSAD in RH9 and FC1 and it gets installed
into /opt/IBM/... so I have to assume that the installer does have
control over where things are installed. It was not an RPM install though.
So I guess that I do see some inconsistency but I don't see a problem...
Mike
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