RedHat, Fedora future?

[Robin Laing]

Christoph Wickert wrote:
> Am Do, den 05.02.2004 schrieb Robin Laing um 16:50:
> 
> 
>>I like Fedora but I don't like that it doesn't follow the standards as 
>>laid down by the Filesystem Hierarchy Standard 
>><http://www.pathname.com/fhs/index.html> for location of applications 
>>and files. 
> 
> 
> Could you give an example?
> 
> Christoph
> 
> 

Install Mozilla in fedora and it installs in /usr/lib/mozilla-x
Install OpenOffice in Fedora and it installs in /usr/lib/openoffice

These are two major applications.

Now install the binaries from either download site (non-rpm) and they 
will install in /opt, not /usr/lib .

Looking at the fhs standards it states.

[quote]
/usr/lib : Libraries for programming and packages
Purpose

/usr/lib includes object files, libraries, and internal binaries that 
are not intended to be executed directly by users or shell scripts.

Applications may use a single subdirectory under /usr/lib. If an 
application uses a subdirectory, all architecture-dependent data 
exclusively used by the application must be placed within that 
subdirectory.
[/quote]

and

[quote]
/opt : Add-on application software packages
Purpose

/opt is reserved for the installation of add-on application software 
packages.

A package to be installed in /opt must locate its static files in a 
separate /opt/<package> or /opt/<provider> directory tree, where 
<package> is a name that describes the software package and <provider> 
is the provider's LANANA registered name.
[/quote]

 From the standards it is clear that Fedora is installing OpenOffice 
and Mozilla in the wrong directories.  I have not had a chance to 
check on a totally Fedora machine about various application ~/ config 
files.

One reason that I am looking at this as being a problem is from 
trouble shooting.  If an application is supposed to install in /opt 
and Fedora installs it in /usr/lib, online info for the common user 
can just confuse the user.

Another concern of mine is in managing different OS's with common 
applications.   Example between Gentoo and RedHat.

What about shared directories and links between different versions of 
Linux.  This could be an issue if different distros put configuration 
files in different directories.  An example here is Open Office again. 
  In the users directory is .openoffice that has a link to 
/usr/lib/openoffice/program/soffice

Now if I want to share this /home partition between different distro's 
of Linux, the link could point to a non-existent file as OpenOffice 
will be installed in /opt/openoffice or /usr/local.  Now how do I fix 
this problem easily?

I do admit that Fedora is following the standard that states an 
application can be fully put in a subdirectory of /usr/lib but as I 
said earlier, if you download the binary from Mozilla and install it, 
then it will install in the /usr/local/mozilla directory.  Same with 
OpenOffice or most other applications that I have installed without 
using RPM's.

I for one want linux to become more mainstream but when I have 
problems and I can fix them it is one thing.  When I try telling a new 
user that is trying Linux and he is finding that the documentation on 
the WWW site is pointing to a location that is not on his RH 
distribution, he starts wondering about the usefulness of this.

An example of what I am saying here is on this page.
 
http://www.mozilla.org/docs/end-user/guide/get-started.html#installing-on-linux 


It references /usr/local/mozilla/plugins whereas on Fedora it would be 
/usr/lib/mozilla/plugins.

I may be nitpicking here but with reference to the article, I think it 
can become a problem in the scheme of things.  I know around work 
since RH is dropping support for RH9 people are looking and trying 
different distros.  As I was still on RH8, I became the first to try 
Fedora.  I am also about to look at other distros.  As my /home 
directory is on a NFS server, I have to look at compatibility between 
distros and this is one area that keeps showing up.

I hope this explains my comments in detail enough to be discussed.

-- 
Robin Laing