At 05:44 PM 5/20/00 +0200, Vitux wrote [in part]: >Just a pitiful newbie wondering: I thought all *nix'es were >supposed to use basically the same filesystem-structure. How >come then, that Debian has proprietary placement of files? >(maybe I've missed a point here, but isn't that part of the >idea with *nix; to have a standard for the fs, which all >flavors adhere to?!) I tend to feel uneasy using my buddy's >SuSe-system; things don't work the way they do in Debian, and >stuff is placed differently... >Is Debian developing into a segregated OS, straying from the >righteous path of *nix?!
Not at all. There is some "spread" developing across all the major Linux distributions these days with respect to file placement. Start with *any* of (say) Caldera, Debian, Red Hat, Slackware, and SuSE, and move to *any* of the others, and you'll need to do some adjusting, sometimes considerable adjusting. Less than if you move from any of them to (say) Solaris or HP-UX, though. It's hard to say whether "all *nix'es were supposed to use basically the same filesystem-structure" or not. Depends on your definition of "basically", I suppose. In any case, Debian isn't unusually bad in this respect. Standardization in Unix/Linux has always been more of an ideal than a realized practice. These days, when I advise clients on Linux server setup and staffing, I recommend that they make sure they hire sysadmin support that knows the specific Linux distribution they plan to use (or to hire a sysadmin, then let him or her pick the distribution) -- just knowing "Linux" isn't good enough any more, in my opinion ... as your experience trying to move between Debian and SuSE illustrates. ------------------------------------"Never tell me the odds!"--- Ray Olszewski -- Han Solo Palo Alto, CA [EMAIL PROTECTED] ----------------------------------------------------------------
