>>21
The FHS is insane as fuck. The short names are a hassle, but they are also semantically incorrect and the whole design seems to be the botched result of crap over crap trying to accomodate new requirements to an old, clearly inservible convention.
Also, as for saving CPU with short names, CFLAGS JUST KICKED IN, YO! OMG OMG /usr/bin -O3 -m64 -march=athlon64 -mtune=athlon64 -msse2 -mfpmath=sse -malign-double -ffast-math -ffloat-store -fstrict-aliasing -funroll-loops -funroll-all-loops -floop-optimize2 -falign-jumps -fomit-frame-pointer -fno-exceptions -fprefetch-loop-arrays -fexpensive-optimizations -fmove-all-movables -s -fap-fap-fap-fap-fap-fap!!!
Running different versions of a software simultaneously is a specialty task.
Not too uncommon for DEVELOPERS DEVELOPERS DEVELOPERS and that's supposed to be Unix' sweet spot. Also, what about different versions of libraries? That's how /lib turned out to be such a big ugly mess and it's still not right in some cases. Also, try installing two different C compilers with different headers and libraries.
I'd just statically link the app or contain everything the app requires in a directory (mswindows-style) and drop the result to /opt.
Lol. The "Windows" style (as much as I hate it, Windows is much saner here) is about executables being able to find DLLs in PATH, and PATH beginning with ".", and "." meaning the executable directory. LD_LIBRARY_PATH just fails, and you just can't do the same thing on Unix because of its braindamaged design here. At best, you can fix it with a shell script that sets everything up, like Mozilla does. That's the only way to have sane software on Unix.
By sane, I understand this software should contain everything it needs (which you may decide to delete if you want to rely on libraries in some other dierctory, or you may want to hard link to save space(*)), and it should be completely relocable. "Installing" (or the more enterprisey "deploying") it means you copy the directory or expand an archive. Uninstalling means you delete the directory. Configuration (and this is where Windows fails miserably with the registry) must be in INI files within the application directory (global) and a configuration subdirectory in home for per-user configuration, although handling profiles itself and keeping them in the application directory is fine too (useful when OS users != real users, or you want several profiles).
(*): I have a script to detect identical files recursively, then allow me to choose which ones to hard link to save space. You can link libraries that are of the same version safely this way. Deletion of any is alright, and updating means copying over it so the link is broken and other applications keep their correct versions.
As your gripe about package managers, don't you see the benefits of dynamic linking and shared libraries?
I see them. And I see this should be simple enough so that I can handle it myself with cp and rm.
Incrementally updated shared libs have an immediate effect upon app that depend on them.
And this effect usually means you've been raped in the ass.
>>24, >>26
Consider the time when Unix was designed.
I do, but you consider the time it's now, and our needs today, and the fact we're running an OS based on the 30 years old design requirements and constraints, and the fact hippies made them their religion and don't want to upgrade.
>>31
Windows' registry is shit. I'd still take the registry shit over the FHS shit, but ideally, I'd have neither.
>>33
I don't get spyware on my Windows, and if I need to remove shit, I just go and delete it boldly.
Windows costs far more than $29.99. It's more like $299.99.
Yes, running multiple versions of a program on Linux is bad. But it's not something you should be doing on any operating system unless you're a developer. Which you're obviously not.
I'm
>>20, and I am a developer. (DEVELOPERS DEVELOPERS DEVELOPERS)
Furthermore, Linux isn't profit-driven. We DON'T NEED the stupid people.
I agree, and I agree with this point. And just exactly because Linux is aimed at people who know what they do and are frequently developers, I wonder why don't we get something better than the piece of shit the FHS is. I'd think "mess", "limited" and "semantically wrong" would be attributes you'd apply to stuff on the Windows platform, not Linux.