[geeks] RedHat restructure

[Charles Shannon Hendrix]

On Wed, Nov 05, 2003 at 10:20:59AM -0600, Jonathan C. Patschke wrote:

> Speaking of Slackware, I used 9.1 this weekend for the first time,
> having not touched it since 7.0.  Slackware's porkin' on up there at

This isn't Slackware's fault: new libraries and dependencies have been
growing like mad for the last couple of years.  User's demand that
stuff, and so it went in.

The base install is still pretty small though.

> 2CDs[0], and network configuration isn't nearly as cut-and-dry[1] as
> it used to be now that they've broken out the top half of rc.inet1
> into rc.inet1.conf.

BSD did this years ago.  Everything in NetBSD is broken out now, and
it is easier to take care of.  It also reduces code errors by having
configuration changes in separate files.

Personally, I wish Slackware would move fully to the NetBSD method.  

If Suse and RedHat start getting a lot of commercial support, I'm afraid
that a lot of software might start requiring their kind of setup files.

I hope people are smart enough to avoid this, since it isn't that hard
to provide installs that aren't specific, but the commercial industry
often doesn't use its head.

I do not like the complicated SysV /etc crap in RedDrakeSuseHat and
Debian.

> I guess I'm spoiled by the BSD approach of supporting a relatively
> small amount of software as "the OS", while letting porters or pkgsrc
> maintainers deal with the rest of it.

I'm not sure what you mean.

The only differnce I see between BSD and Slackware in this regard, is
that Slackware's installer offers more choices.  No one forces you to
make them.  I suppose they should list the base OS as a set of packages
you can pick at once and skip the rest.

I'm pretty well indifferent, since it hasn't been a problem for me.

My primary complaint about Slackware is the build system.  It really
needs something better.



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