RedHat, Fedora future?

[M.Hockings]

Robin Laing wrote:

> 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.


Personally I find this all very interesting as before reading this 
thread I didn't even know that there was a spec about where to put 
things!  Here are a few randomish thoughts.

On Windows you will see the  typical installer ask to put a new program 
at "C:\Program Files\some-vendor-name" but you can change this to 
"e:\where-ever-ya-want" and the program will still install.  However it 
now won't match the documentation -- does this confuse users too?  (ans: 
yes, even though they chose to put it there)

I must admit that on more than one occasion I have installed something 
in Linux (via RPM and via "make install") and the docs indicate  that it 
would go to  /usr/local/bin/pgm-name but I find it in 
/usr/bin/pgm-name.  What controls this?  Is it an exported (or somehow 
retrieved) system setting, the RPM builder, the makefile author, or 
what?  I have not viewed this an inhibitor to using RedHat, more like I 
thought it was my inexperience with Linux leading me astray.

Lastly, I have installed IBM's WSAD in RH9 and FC1 and it gets installed 
into /opt/IBM/... so I have to assume that the installer does have 
control over where things are installed.  It was not an RPM install though.

So I guess that I do see some inconsistency but I don't see a problem...

Mike