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Linux Standard Effort Edges Ahead
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."
Pledges to conform to the requirements of Version 3 are Red Hat, Novell's Suse Linux, Asianux and Debian.
Four down, only 458 to go.
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~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey
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.
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.
Why doesn't he blurb link to the LSB website at all? it's here Anyway's.
The article gets funnier when you read LSB as Least Significant Bit.
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.
Don't get your hopes up. While the LSB appears like a very useful standard, as many have noted there are some real holes, and the test suite is by all accounts utterly useless. Further, there's not as tight of control of the testing so it appears at least some vendors are doing bizarre things to be compliant without waivers, despite tests that don't run in real world situations.
One example that Ulrich Drepper of RedHat pointed out is the thread test, which won't run on an SMP box. The LSB people's response? Run it on a slow uniprocessor. What's the point of this again?
I know the debian port for AMD64 decided to make the 64bit arch a first class citizen. i.e. there is a /lib directory. Fedora OTOH uses a /lib64 directory. This is like saying there is something special about 64bit libraries on a 64bit arch. Does the new LSB specify how this should be handled? Who will have to change, debian or Red Hat? I run Fedora and am disappointed to have a /lib64 full of stuff and /lib that is almost empty. Thoughts on this?
And, I might mention, I think it matters A Lot.
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http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,1861272,00.a
From where I sit, Red Hat's Drepper
http://linux.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/09/19
wants to throw the baby of open standardization out with the bathwater of LSB standardization testing, which could still stand a lot of improvement.
With open standardization, Linux could go the way of Intel Unix--shudder!
Steven
I'm torn on whether a bad standard is actually better than none. I don't think the problems lie so much in the LSBv3 standard itself, as in the poor management of the standard that such a young standards body is having.
RedHat is really the company which needs to drive this standard, and while so far they've been doing a lot to do so, its not really in their best competitive interests. Consider that all the major "enterprise" products that folks would want on Linux (WebSphere, Oracle, WebLogic, etc) all specify RedHat as their supported distro.
I think we need to heap scorn on the crappy test suite now, to try and force them to clean up their act before they engender too much negative press and reputation. Once we hit a certain point where the negative reputation builds up, the standard will be doomed forever.