[plug] standard (was X startup)

[Bill Kenworthy]

These are standards paradoxically!  They trace their history back to
earlier Unix's/BSD or where ever they pinched the original config from. 
e.g., Mandrake follows RH, gentoo takes ideas from BSD/debian.  Part of
the flexibility is due to the ability to mix and match.

Your last point about desktops is sorta valid: but at the loss of much
flexibility and function.  KDE and Gnome have emerged as the standard
destops, particularly for workstations.  

You will find that most packages have a readme which state what other
packages are needed.  Mandrakes "urpmi" will tell you what is needed
after checking the current system.  However none are perfect, and are
quite fragile when you start adding your own packages (not the
manufacturers matched ones)

RedHat is a bit primitive in its package handing, Mandrake and debian
are a lot better.

If you dont like the way your linux distro does things, roll your own or
wait a day or two and a better one may come along!

BillK

On Thu, 2002-07-18 at 00:07, John Knight wrote:
> You can see why I was pitching the idea of a 'GNU Standards Burea' the other 
> day. Why not have it across the board? If I get a package from a Mandrake 
> CD, there's bugger all chance of it working with RH or SuSE, unless you get 
> a bunch of other libraries and packages from here, there and everywhere. 
> Even then, I have probs installing a lot of games under RH 7.3 because it 
> requires a package that I have no idea what it is. Why can't we have some 
> sort of GNU standard desktop, where it has a basic desktop with certain 
> libraries, and then a programme's readme says what other packages are 
> required on top of that?
> 
> Enough of my whinging, you get the idea! ;)
> >