[SunRescue] Shells

[Peter Koch]

Hi!

>If you like compiling all your apps for Solaris, why don't you just grab a
>Linux kernel and compile userland from scratch?

Why? Solaris is much more mature than Linux. Even good ol' SunOS
is better than Linux on a Sun (won't argue for a PC which are
broken hardware anyway).

But i'm so used to GNU stuff... so i undergo this procedure of
compiling anything i need. It is well worth the effort.

PC-based GNU/Linux distributions are sometimes quite well done.
I really like the SuSE 6.2. Many userland programs work out of
the box and i hardly have reason to recompile. Interaction
between some of the packages are resolved too! The stuff from
www.sunfreeware.com doesn't resolve such interactions (how could
it!?!).

>Programs that require gmake are broken.  Period.

Sure. But programs that do not require gmake are fun to compile
on multiprocessor machines with gmake -j ;-)

>Then why compare it with Linux distributions where you don't recompile
>software?  There is no functional difference between grabbing a Linux
>distribution that happens to include a grab bag of software and grabbing 
>a bunch of precompiled applications for Solaris.

There IS a difference. If packages interact, this interaction is
not considered on single packages on www.sunfreeware.com but
sometimes on complete distributions. This is why i prefer SuSE
over RedHat. SuSE has its own problems (they usually oversimplify)
but that are configuration things that can be fixed without
recompiling.

Tschuess

Peter