Compatibility Issues Across Linux Distributions? 14
"How are the LSB and the FSSTND affecting consistency between distros? What about RPM and APT? What tools are there available for developers of software to ensure that their software runs on the widest variety of systems? Is there some software development or packaging tool to assist developers in making distribution-independant software, so they can create files in dpkg, RPM and tgz formats for any distribution without much additional effort on their part? What about tools to test their software installation on individual distributions, and assist with the resolution of problems? Should this be up to the individual distributions, or should be have a unified approach?"
Re:Well... (Score:1)
So was Debian. "Debian Linux" (as it was called then) was first publically released in January 1994. By your comment, every distro should be just like slackware as it predates most distros. So that comment is not valid.
Debian has always been the "for the community by the community" distro. Red Hat has always been a little more of the "newbie" or "easy to install" distro.
RPM is nice, but it doesn't come close to DPKG. The
Enough ranting...
Why are people so stupid about Distros? (Score:1)
I get irritated every time this pops up
OK, so you run a, for example, Red Hat system. And you're looking for a piece of softweare, but the only thing you can find is a SuSE RPM for it. Download, install, complains about 800 missing RPM's because SuSE and RH use completely different naming schemas.
So you go over to rpmfind.net. enter the name of the various SuSE RPM's, see what's in them. "rpm -q -f filename" on your system, and see that they are all there. Install RPM. Done.
These "Runs on RedHat" things that everyone sees are really meant for the not-so-technical of us who can't figure out how to track down what libraries in particular aren't there. There are so many variations of Linux installations out there that it would be almost impossibleto know how to fix every problem with every one. So they pick one or two, and that's that.
If you're spart enough to figure out how to resolve your own cross-distro dependencies, then install it and be done with it. But realize this isn't a technical, won't-run-on-distro-X notice, but a technical, we-can't-support-every-variation notice.
Try this (Score:1)
http://kitenet.net/programs/alien/ [kitenet.net]
Need a mediating layer (Score:1)
Rather than a "Red Hat RPM" or a "SuSE RPM" we could just have "RPMs" that would abstract all the details. The specifics on file placement that are inherent to the current situation [above] and to the package files themselves must be standardized and abstracted before linux will get that support and enthusiasm from both commercial software vendors and endusers alike. Same goes for APT and tgz (as well as other package types) as well.
Of RPM's and Deb's (Score:1)
--dave
Re:Need a mediating layer (Score:1)
software across the distributions.
loki's installers (Score:1)
something like that, imho, would be the best way to approach a cross-platform installation..
talk to loki (or but a game or two) for more info on it.
The new release fixes that! (Score:1)
Re:Why are people so stupid about Distros? (Score:1)
With this growth and wider acceptance, many issues will pop up. One of them is inconsistency across distributions. The Linux community may laugh at the badness of Windows, but the Windows platform has allowed developers to target one (or at most two) platform. Consumers can read the side of the box and see whether their machine can run a particular program. Since there are only a couple of Windows platforms with huge similarities between the two, developers can easily deploy programs, even with 'stupid users'.
The 'DLL hell' that used to be derided on the Windows platform has now found its way over to Linux. If a user needs to go through all the steps and research you wrote about, they aren't getting any work done. Not everyone is a hacker, which disappoints many Linux users. If Linux really is to make it into the mainstream, a whole lot of Linux distros will have to disappear. RedHat will probably be the one that is chosen as the de facto Linux platform and all others will need to become identical or face extinction.
I am not saying that any particular platform is the best (I run SuSE, myself) and deserves to become the standard, but just observing that lack of standardization among distros is the Achilles heel of Linux. Without standardized installation procedures and default libraries, those 'stupid users' will not make the jump.
Dancin Santa
Personally... (Score:2)
I prefer to grab the .tar.gz or bz2 of the source and compile it myself. No incompatibilities yet. :-)
So long as I know whbat the package requirements are I have had no trouble installing quite a few RedHat (ick) .RPMs. Even Win4Lin went in without a hitch. It's just a matter of reading the documentation. Needs PAM, glibc2.2, bash2.17. no problem. Sometimes there's some path altering and whatnot but it's generally not a problem.
Installation is the Easy Part (Score:2)
Re:Why are people so stupid about Distros? (Score:2)
Let's not forget, administrators don't necessarily want to go through that much of a pain in the ass to get a package installed.
As this stuff comes out, we're finding more flaws in the Linux/distro models. Things that need to be fixed at some point to be a great enterprise scale operating system. These are things that code itself won't fix, it's management.
Not to mean that Linux is, by nature, flawed. Far from it. But every system goes through this kind of thing.
Well... (Score:2)
But, it seems to me as if the companys are trying to pick a standard. Redhat was one of the first Linux distros to come out, and alot of other Distros are based on it, or are atleast using RPMs. And, most likely, there are more people using it. Out of all the stuff I have ever downloaded for Linux, I have only seen a selection for a
Re:Well... (Score:3)
There is a reason for that. Most open source stuff can be grabbed directly from a Debian mirror using apt-get. This is why you don't see as much stuff on the web in
Commercial Linux software is a different story - it's pretty clear that