Linux Standards Base released

[texon]

The news today (zdnet and elsewhere) mentions that a bunch of the other linux companies announced that they're working towards some kind of standard. Don't know much more than that. I assume that gentoo would be able to mesh with any such standard, just because its flexible enough to configure pretty much anyway one wants.

I didn't see gentoo specifically mentioned in the press releases, but is this standards effort something in which the gentoo community is going to participate?

texon

[Voltago]

[Carlo]

[deternal]

AFAIK LSB is a standardization of filesystempaths and a base set of packages that you would need - if that is in place you would have an LSB compliant system.

Now considering how gentoo systems are basically customized it seems logical that not all gentoo boxes can (nor should) be LSB compliant, however adhering to the systempaths and adding the possibility to fetch all the LSB basepackages at one time (ie emerge lsb, or a make-conf option such as x86LSB) would definitely be a nice feature.

Since I'm not a developer I do not know how much work the above mentioned would entail, but as a user I'd definitely appreciate the option. And most server admins probably will too (ie. commercial software companies can't just write off your problems on the distro - atleast not that easily, if you can claim atleast basic LSB compliance).

[kallamej]

Moved from Portage & Programming as it is not a support request.
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[playfool]

The big news this time is standardising on C++, an area where the GCC guys protested the decision quite a bit as I understand.

I like LSB, we need standards to ensure that the user and the software maker gets the most out of Linux without having to support millions of path combinations and versions of standard software.

[skyfolly]

They said they did not want to repeat Unix's history(many forkings). So they had to standardise Linux.

And it is still underdevelopment, you can submit your own piece of work.

Create and maintain a list of criteria for evaluating and categorizing potential candidates.
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[Evangelion]

[playfool]

[aja]

[Archangel1]

[millenium_psyrax]

[Ruzbeh]

What's so terribly wrong about RPM?

[Evangelion]

[Ravenium]

I may have missed something by just skimming through the page, but I thought the minimal level of compatibility with this standard was "a system for tracking, versioning, installing, managing (etc etc)". Packages. Now, granted we don't directly support RPM in the way that redhat does it, but doesn't Portage comply with the IDEA of package management mentioned in the LSB spec?

I took away from the articles more that they're trying to make it so that you don't have to code x number of variations on your program or x number of installs for x number of linux distros. (The amusing thing that they focus on RPM is that right now you actually have to fuddle with your RPM if you're on an earlier redhat, fedora, or enterprise...or at least I did. Maybe it's not the best thing to use redhat's ideas as an example for a standard...)

And yes, the usual file paths for stuff, ie you'll always find things where the spec says you will. Who knows, I guess we'll have to see as it develops.

-Barry

[virtual]

Hi,

Well I belive standards are a good thing generaly speaking, BUT if you look at another big OS like M$ you can easily see the security threat when everyone does it the same way. 1 virus can spread to millons of pc's without much difficulty. Also I belive that standards cripple progress and inovation because you always have to follow the standard. Look at the user interface of W$-95 and all the way to someting-XP not much has changed. Now this is also a good thing but I do not want to see Linux suffer from it's own standard. Standards are to be used wisely and broken when needed.
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[msimplay]

[KingPunk]

[episode96]

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[episode96]

[virtual]

Hi,

File permissions do exist, but that was not my point.

Imagine you want to write a virus, a virus needs a host to breed and multiply.
What do we know, well let's say we use something called the registry and we put this on our pc, we'll make this file our gathering point for all our confiigurations and we will make it a standard so all pc's use this file.

Now if I can infect the registry I can infect "all" pc's because I know how this registry is built and it's the same on all pc's.

In Linux writing such a virus is a bit more difficult because there is a larger and diverse set of config files, and these are not even located on the same place on different distos. So even if the virus could infect it would not be able to breed as rapidly because of the non standard way things are done in the Linux world.

This is just food for thought, an example of a trap when using standards of course you can secure any os. Standards are a good thing but they should be open for re-evaluation constantly and not be so rigid that they become a ball and chain around the leg of progress.
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[Saa]

[Evangelion]