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I think choice is good, but only if they are good choices. Like the Monty Python spam sketch. A lot of choice, but all with spam.

Also a lot of choices don't really matter. When my wife asks me to get a cola from the kitchen I tease her by asking if the wants a small glass or a big one. If she says big I ask it she wants a big one or a really big one. If it's just a big one I ask her if she wants a certain kind of big glass. In this case the user doesn't care about choice, the users wants a bloody cola.

Linux has a number of package systems (while some don't) and a number of location where certain files should be. I really don't think these are things most users really care about, yet this "choice" has an impact on the usability.

When I was using Red Hat I needed certain RPMs, but which one worked depended on the version of Red Hat. Sometimes I couldn't find the Red Hat one, but I did find a Mandrake one. That one may or may not work. If it did work it was bound to give problems when doing a distro upgrade.

I'd say this is a choice we never needed. Strict rules about file locations, one package system. Now you have the choice of installing by package or using source. That seems enough for me. With one package system <any package> works on <any Linux distro>.

Your wife is a lucky woman


RPMs are largely supposed to be platform independent due to the rules of LSB (Linux Standard Base).

Plus Mandrake is a derivative of Redhat so I can't see any reason why it shouldn't work.

Please installing 3rd party packages like you are doing shouldn't be done by standard users - they should only really install what's provided in the repos or add another repo to the list of trusted sources. What you're doing is applying the "Windows method" (TM) to Linux when Linux isn't intended to be opperated like Windows.

While I will agree that, as sys admins, there maybe non-standard packages that we would want installed - but as sys admins, we (you) should be competent to install 3rd party RPMs and/or install from source if needs be.

So your example doesn't really work as you're discussing stuff that only trained server administrators would undertake and comparing it to jobs that the average Joe would be expected to cope with. It's a little like saying the average Joe should be able to set up NFS on OS X networks or manage Windows Active Directory - which clearly they wouldn't.


Actually the choice there was needed. Redhat is for servers, Mandrake is for dumb users (it's the Ubuntu of the Redhat builds). The two are targeted for different users and roles. Having that choice there makes a lot of sense. Plus you also have to remember that Mandrake is one of the original "desktop Linux's" - it pre-dates Ubuntu by quite some years.

What I don't agree with is the hundreds of Ubuntu "remixes", many of which are nothing more than a Ubuntu + "here's a theme I made earlier". Utter pointlessness in my opinion.

So the point is some forks make a lot of sense - others don't. But sadly you can't allow some forks and not others.


There is:
/home = users home
/root = super users home
/etc = system config files
/dev = system devices
/proc = run time virtual file system
/var/logs = log files
/usr = user installed stuff (rather than core / base installed stuff)
/boot = boot volume

Executables are in bin and sbin directories. sbin generally means binaries run by root only. And while there are rules in place about what subdirectory some executables belong, generally it doesn't matter as they all land in $PATH and all discoverable by which. Thus most of the time sys
admins don't care where executables land - end users would want, need nor care where they are.

I'm not saying that the file system is plain English and easy to learn, but that doesn't change the fact that the common misconception that files are just plonked randomly is completely false. Furthermore, the user doesn't need to know where programs are installed. This isn't Windows where 3rd party devs have free reign to install stuff where-ever they want - apps are managed by package managers that adhear to the this standard. Which, by the way, has been formally standardised and is known as the FHS (Filesystem Hierarchy Standard).


There is. LSB (Linux Standard Base) formally states that all LSB compliant distros must support RPM. This means that Slackware, Arch, Debian and even Ubuntu actually support RPMs. The fact that they also have their own preferred package distribution method isn't necessarily a bad thing because it means that they have well maintained repositories and LSB fallback support. (I guess a little like how Windows will have Install EXE's created from InstallShield, Nullsoft and Microsoft's own MSI format. They all work differently but they all work.


Again, you're dropping in highly technical systems administration functions as "normal day to day activities" for an end user. Please don't mix up the two types of users because they're as different as night and day. I don't kick off that Windows is crap because most end users wouldn't know how to set up an exchange server nor compile their own C# app, so why make the same silly statement for Linux users?

[edit]
Sorry for the lengthy post, but you've given well constructed reasons for your arguments so I felt you at least deserved the same in return for any points I personally disagreed with

Edited 2012-03-30 12:35 UTC