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Three Major Linux Distributions Certified LSB Compliant

Posted by timothy on from the oh-you're-so-compliant dept.

KevinDumpsCore writes "RedHat, Mandrake, and SuSE are now certified LSB compliant!" Here's the announcement on the Free Standards Group's site. The Linux Standards Base (check out these related Slashdot posts) has been working for years to perhaps tame the what-lives-where cross-distro craziness. (Of course, distro makers are under no obligation to comply with the LSB's choices.)

4 of 188 comments (clear)

  1. RPM... by matman · · Score: 5, Interesting

    It's too bad that the LSB people havn't yet taken on packaging issues. They've effectively chickened out by just recommending RPM. The best features of RPM, DEB and the BSD ports system should be reflected in a new packaging format for people to work towards using. Not only should this format be recommended by the LSB, but the LSB should define policies for the use of the format - package name and version formats, dependencies and package alias names, source package handling, non-official packages, etc. This really is necessary to get distribution of commercial software on Linux; testing for and supporting distribution differences is just too expensive for most companies. This is not to say that everyone supporting RPM won't help, but rather that policies are needed to really make it work, and that we may as well get a more optimal package management system happening :)

    1. Re:RPM... by cant_get_a_good_nick · · Score: 4, Interesting

      The BSD ports setup pretty much requires source distribution and the target audience for LSB isn't interested in that.

      BSD also has binary packages, which mesh with the ports system. They're .tgz packages with the normal pre and postinstall scripts available in the package. I always thought of the BSD system as pretty slick, a source model and a binary package model that mesh well. Anything I installed from ports I remove with the package tools. I can check for new versions of all externally installed software (packages and ports) with the same command. They blend well enough for me that I kind of see them as one system.

  2. Re:What about Debian? by Trevelyan · · Score: 3, Interesting

    The are some problems, for some reason LSB specifies a standard package, ie RPM
    I do not know why, I see no reason for it, but obvious this is a problem for Debian, which has its own (imo superior) package (debs).

    This article from Debian planet, is about a sudo package you can install, which depends on all the LSB stuff (thus gets them installed, with some caveats)
    As to RPM, Debian wont move from debs, but I believe they make a wrapper so that dpkg can understand them, see /usr/share/doc/lsb/README.Debian.gz

    I will not install lsb, cause it wants lpr (BSD print deamon) and I already use CUPS (a SysV print deamon), as well as other stuff.

  3. Wrong. Simple counterexample. by BlowCat · · Score: 3, Interesting
    Suppose that some commercial development tool requires gcc-3.0.1 or above. They make an RPM. What should they require? "gcc >= 3.0.1"? Wrong. A user of RedHat 7.2 can have gcc-2.96 and gcc3-3.0.4. Maybe "gcc3 >= 3.0.1". Nope. RedHat 8.0 will have gcc-3.1 (maybe even gcc-3.2) and no gcc3 package.

    Handling of incompatible versions of the same software is done ad hoc, without any strictly established and well designed rules. Either the old or the new version gets a number appended to the package name (glib10, kde2, gcc3).