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Big Names Back Possible Linux Standards
Sean Feryl writes "Adobe Systems, IBM, Intel, Hewlett-Packard, Novell, RealNetworks and Red Hat are all backing the new Linux standards effort led by the Free Standards Group to form standards for key components of Linux desktop software, including libraries, application runtime and install time. The goal is to encourage the development of more applications for the Linux platform. 'With this complex and costly development and support environment, independent software vendors may choose not to target the Linux desktop, leading to reduced choice for end users and an inability to compete with proprietary operating systems', the group said." Also covered on FoxNews.
FWIW, I'm running Acrobat7 on Linux.
Pessimists.net - as if life wasn't depressing enough.
yes writing applications ontop of KDE and Gnome requires using different system libraries that have incompatable APIs
IIRC
I always use wxWidgets.
You also want the presentation of your controls to be as similiar as possible. Take these two images for example - they're both the same app that i'm working on - one is on windows/wxWin and linux/wxGTK
POF Constructor Suite 2.x Alpha build 20050902 Win32
POF Constructor Suite 2.x Alpha build 20050919 Linux
You'll notice the data editor panel in the lower left hand corner has marked alignment issues under linux/wxGTK (it also has them under linux/wxX11).
If you cannot keep politics out of your moderation remove yourself from the Mod Lottery.. NOW!
Filesystem Hierarchy Standard (FHS)
/media and /srv additions you see in distros now days.
http://www.pathname.com/fhs/
This is a well known standard that has been around for quite some time. Most distros that I see have finally made the move to this structure. This was the primary driving force behind the
If you must!
What's wrong with /etc/X11? That's exactly doing what you're talking about — putting similar files in similar places. Configuration files go to /etc/; X11 configuration files in particular go to /etc/X11.
So, what's wrong with that?
quidquid latine dictum sit altum videtur.
the only common thread is X-Windows (and not always that...what's about Sun's JDS Java Desktop System?)
JDS is X11 and GNOME with all the buttons relabeled to SUN- or Java-something. Not only that, but in Solaris x86, the X11 server is X.org 6.8.
Slagborr
--Grace Hopper
She also said that, "it's easier to ask for forgiveness than it is to ask for permission." So would everyone stop making bloody announcements and just get the standards DONE WITH!
(For those who are interested, the context was a Chips Ahoy! magazine interview in which she threw a question back at the interviewer about when the magazine was going to get their subscription-handling computer system fixed. The interviewer replied that they were working on it. She replied that they should "just do it" and then quoted the line above. The original article can be found here.)
The reasoning for having a /bin and a /usr/bin is that you can have a very small root partition. Then when /usr gets mounted you pick up the rest of the binaries that you want for a fully functioning system. Moving /usr/local/bin and /usr/bin out of /usr and into /bin would defeat the whole purpose.
/usr partition gets corrupted you can still boot and have the tools you need to get they system functioning again. Kind of like a built-in rescue disk.
/usr/local/bin directory exists for binaries that are not managed by the distribution's packaging system. That prevents add-on software from breaking dependencies in the underlying OS. That is why most software that you download and compile yourself installs itself in /usr/local.
/usr/share/bin directory is for binaries that may be shared among multiple systems. For instance an in-house network may have an NFS shared volume with binaries that are used on all systems. Man pages are often included here because they tend not to change much from system to system.
/etc directory is much more complicated than it needs to be, and that things are hard to find. After I point out how much cleaner /etc is than the windows registry those complaints tend to go away as well.
The reason you want a minimal root partition is that a smaller partition with fewer files will have less oportunity for corruption. That way if your larger
The
The
IMHO people who complain about this structure are just looknig for something to whine about. All of these directories are automaticaly added to the path, so most users should never have to think about them at all.
I often hear from windows users that the
If there is a problem with the unix directory structure its that the names are far from clear. What exactly do etc and usr stand for? If usr is for user then isn't that where the home directories should be? var makes a certain amount of sense to developers, but I don't know that most people would understand that means "stuff that changes a lot". I don't suggest that the names change because that could be an even bigger mess, but I do think that experienced users need to keep all this in mind when helping new users to understand the system.
XML is the best data format; unless your data needs to be read or written by a human or a computer.
A lot of people have mentioned the problems of which GUI these companies would write applications for. What if someone were to create wrapper around both KDE and Gnome GUI libraries that applications could use, and would detect which GUI was currently being used. That way, applications that these companies make could work no matter which GUI a user prefers. Keep in mind that I don't use linux and am only somewhat familiar with appliction programming (I'm a web developer).
Okay, keeping it in mind...:)
You don't need to be running GNOME, for example, to run GTK-based applications (GTK is the API that GNOME is built with); you only need to have the GTK libs installed on your system. So, realistically, Adobe (for example) could make PS a native GNOME application and include the GTK libs on the installation disc to make life a bit easier for those that use KDE and don't want to fsck around with looking for libraries that didn't get installed with the OS (thinking average person here, rather than average Slashdotter). Hope this helps.
Writhe your naked ass to the mindless groove.