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Linux Standard Effort Edges Ahead

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the for-some-definition-of-ahead dept.

ErikPeterson writes "The Free Standards Group has released its third version of the Linux Standard Base, an effort to unify some of the workings of the open-source operating system. The LSB is designed to make it easier for those producing higher-level software to support different versions of Linux. Pledges to conform to the requirements of Version 3 are Red Hat, Novell's Suse Linux, Asianux and Debian."

9 of 138 comments (clear)

  1. Standards by Tomchu · · Score: 4, Insightful

    A standard is a standard when everyone is using it. Just calling it one doesn't make it so.

    --
    I used to think Linux was cool -- then I turned 14.
    1. Re:Standards by __aajwxe560 · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Whoever flagged you as insightful should be ashamed of themselves. A standard provides a common goal for whomever is interested to work towards. Whether or not the majority work towards the goal does not make it any less of a standard. The short lived DIVX player from Circuit City was a standard, as there exists many different standards for DVDs. Whether or not the majority of devices embrace such a standard does not refute the fact that it exists. Many different types of standards start out in the minority, and many remain so, but they still serve a purpose.
      Anything that promotes some form of application commonality amongst the various Linux distributions certainly cannot be a bad thing.

  2. Package management by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    What the LSB should, imo, do is make autopackage the format of choice for installing applications and then have the default package manager (such as rpms and debs and stuff) to download the dependent libs and keep the base system up-to-date. That way, everyone's happy. The newbies get their easy program installers and the seasoned veterans get their apt. But, alas, it's apparently not to be.

  3. WOW by TampaDeveloper · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Wow. I'm very happy. LSB might actually make Linux useful for those of us trying to make a living off of software development...

    1. Re:WOW by TampaDeveloper · · Score: 2, Insightful

      I certainly understand why RedHat would see it as a conflict of interest. But I think they need to start thinking about the viability of the Linux community as a whole. There are two MAJOR competitors just now coming up to speed; OpenSolaris and OSX for x86. Then theirs OpenBSD. OpenBSD moves slower than Linux because nobody likes to sit around waiting for quality, but in the Unix race, quality seems to win in the long-haul. So if the leaders in the Linux community can't wrangle things together, I think theres a good chance were just going to see it diverge into obscurity.

  4. Like it or not ... by b3x · · Score: 4, Insightful

    This sort of thing is a necessity. With the variety of Distros and each having its own idea of where things should be, it leads to a lot of unecessary confusion. Regardless of whether the confusion is legitimate or slightly hyped by bullet points in paid research docs, it exists.

  5. Re:Whose standard? by LnxAddct · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Well considering that Red Hat, Fedora, Novell, and Debian together hold about 3.5 million servers according to netcraft (as of last march), those are the only players that really matter. Red Hat has about 1.8 million, Fedora: 400,000 , Novell: 400,000 and Debian around 800,000. I haven't read the report in a while but at the time Fedora was expanding at 120% every few months, where as the next fastest distro (I think it was gentoo with 60,000) was growing at 40% over the same time, and all the other distros were much lower than that. I would assume that as a result of Fedora's fast growth rate that Fedora's share is closer to Debian's now. Regardless, after those 4 distros, the next largest was Mandrake (iirc) with around 70,000 active servers. As you can see, those 4 distros(Red Hat, Fedora, Novell, & Debian) are all that really matter and if they all agree on the standard, then it is the standard.
    Regards,
    Steve

  6. I'm impressed by beforewisdom · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I'm impressed that Red Hat has signed on.

    Along with 2 other of the more established distros being onboard this standard has a chance.

  7. Mandates RPM by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I don't see how a standard that uses RPM as the mandatory package format will ever gain enough consensus to be successful.

    What kind of a standard is this anyway? For example:

    Applications are also encouraged to uninstall cleanly.

    Um, that's great. Where's the definition of "cleanly"? Where's the rationale? Where's the implementation notes? This thing reads like a few people got together and jotted down a few notes on what they'd like to see. This ain't a specification. Sure, they go into great detail about the format of the RPM file - but that's already an established format that they don't need to explain.