Distro discusion

[Kirk Wood <cpt.kirk@1tree.net>]

Personally, the biggest thing that I believe is important on a
distribution is good documentation on where files are placed. Having said
that, I think it is past time for the distributions to discuss this and
commit to following a standard (or two). Certainly there will be
differences in such things as init scripts. After all Slackware uses a BSD
style init (more or less) while RedHat uses a SystemV ini (more or less).

There are advantages to both of them, and that isn't the point. The thing
is that RedHat does place some config files in strange places. If there
was one place to put a given file it would make Linux overall
stronger. There could still be room for each to do its thing for
improvement. (For instance once you say that all init scripts will reside
in rc.d you can choose to follow the redhat method of a directory for each
run level and one for the actual scripts. Or you could decide to place
them all in the /etc/rc.d dir.)

Actually, documentation is the biggest weakness I see in Linux. The fact
is that much of the documentation is great if you already know what your
doing. Some of it is great, and some is lousy. Sometimes knowing whre to
look though can be a major task in the first place. One master document
giving direction on where to look for all network functions would be
nice. One covering all disk subsystems would also go a long way.

-- 
Kirk Wood
Cpt.Kirk@1tree.net
------------------

Seek simplicity -- and distrust it.
		Alfred North Whitehead