LSB Submitted To ISO/IEEE

mcneil@freestandards says: "The LSB has been submitted to ISO/IEEE for an ISO imprimatur. While this is not really new news, it is important that every Linux user get involved to make sure their country votes YES for Linux ISO standardization! With Linux achieving international standards recognition it will be that much easier for governments and other risk adverse organizations to include Linux in their procurement policies. This of course will further the normalization of free and open source software, lessen the world's reliance on sucky legacy platforms, etc. etc."

Comments

LSB and rpm

[OmniVector]

As much as I've used Linux, I have no idea how LSB helps per say. If two distros (lets say redhat and suse) both implemented LSB X.0, could I concievably use an rpm on both distros safely? Just curious if LSB guarantees this level if interoperability. If not, what the hell is the point?

Re:LSB and rpm

[CAIMLAS]

The point is this:

If I'm versed in the admin of one LSB-compliant distro, it's trivial to migrate to another (in most respects) as the location of config files and the like is identical.

That's trival, however, compared to the power of influence it will have upon both developers and people looking to adopt linux for deployment. If a distro is LSB-compliant, then developers will be able to write simply for all LSB-compliant distros.

Only if distros follow..

[ThisNukes4u]

While I agree that standardization is a good thing, it will only have an effect if distros follow. Right now, one of the most LSB compliant "distros" is Linux From Scratch, which is not exactly a mainstream distro. I know that others have been making strides towards compliance recently, but unless all distros follow it close enough so that one person can work effectivly on different distros without having to relearn its directory layout, it won't affect adoption as it is just another unfollowed standard (HTML, CSS 3 in IE anyone?).

ya but distros will just ignore it

[Anonymous Coward]

Every distro thinks it knows best.

Debian doesn't do a lot of LSB stuff because it just thinks it knows better.

I'm sure gentoo and slackware are the same.

Basically Redhat and Suse will comply and all the other distros will not bother to meet the standard.

No love given

[Anonymous Coward]

"lessen the world's reliance on sucky legacy platforms, etc. etc"

Legacy platforms aren't sucky, they're just dated. Improvements on that technology have been significant, but unstable, thus the call for Linux standardization.

No insults needed on legacy, a concept that has been serving the PC community just fine for about 30 years.

Brooklyn.

Re:No love given

[stratjakt]

I don't know what they're trying to pull, but to me *nix is as legacy a platform as you're going to see.

Which is a good thing. Here's how you market linux to PHB's.

PHB's decomissioned all their old unix systems and bought Windows, thinking it would be newer and better and synergistic, blah blah blah. Instead they get a whole mess of various headaches.

So in comes Mr Pro-Linux Consultant, who says: "Hey, remember the computer system you had before this, you know, the one that just chugged along 24/7 and hardly ever had a hiccup? Would you like to have that again, on cheap, modern commodity hardware?"

It's not: "This is brand new vertacal entergraded synergistic paradigm! ISO! yay!"

What problem

[samjam]

what problems does RPM have?

If you can name any, how confident are you that these are not user-ignorance?

Finally, are you confusing RPM the package format with RPM the package manager? There is more than one RPM based dependancy manager just as there are many (and layers of) package managers for other package formats, e.g. deb.

Sam

Re:What problem

[Zapdos]

RPM Hell.
example.
In order to build a rpm package of the newest xmame you need sdl-dev
sdl-dev needs arts-dev
arts-dev needs kdelibs-dev
This in turn needs kdelibs, arts etc.

The real question, does sdl actually need arts? No it was a dependency question that was answered by the sdl-dev rpm package maintainer. The package maintainer must make decisions that are generic enough to suit the largest group of people.

Re:What problem

[cortana]

The Debian package format provides all the stuff you list as being specific to RPM. Except for a warning about forgetting to package a file that was built.

It seems the two formats are more similar than many people suspect.

Re:At least the writer isn't biased.

[heavy snowfall]

Did it say anywhere when registering that the stories you submit had to be NPOV? (Neutral point of view). This ain't wikipedia.
They gy's allowed to have an opinion, in my opinion.

LSB will be valuable when...

[Glasswire]

1) All distros clearly say that their disro ver X is LSB ver Y compliant and stand behind that.
2) LSB mandates a sufficiently detailed configuration and fileset that a developer can build an app under any LSB ver Y.Z and expect it to install and run (with no missing libaries, re-configuration, config file editing etc) on any other LSB Y.Z compliant disro installation.
3) Oracle ver nn runs under LSB ver Y.Z NOT ONLY RH AS3.x and Suse EL 9.x (or whatever).
4) There's an automated validation that can determine if an initial distro install is (or is still) valid LSB ver Y.Z configuration.

Re:LSB?

[joto]

Nope. It's called endianness.

Re:How will this affect *BSD?

[Asmodai]

Yeah sure.

Normative references to the Linux device list, init.d, run-levels, rpm as packaging, a bunch of user and group names that serve no purpose on other systems, and so on.

Please go fool someone else into thinking you can make it work on BSD, there's a reason why BSD and System V differ, because they are different architectural paths.

Re:At least the writer isn't biased.

[Anonymous Coward]

Well if a person is right and biased...

He is still right.

Maturity

[SunFan]

lessen the world's reliance on sucky legacy platforms

This reeks of a teenager raving about Britney Spears vs. Lindsey Lohan. Either shut up or say something meaningful.