Re: Win vs. UNIX usability (Was: Re: gnome-terminal idea)

[John Looney <John Looney hos horizon ie>]

Ar Mon, Sep 28, 1998 at 02:18:46PM +0100, scriofa Philip Hunt:
> > I can envision a UNIX install program with enough smarts to give the
> > user a few critical choices and figure out the rest on its own...  "Do
> > you want to install in your home directory, or in the system
> > directory?"  If they pick the home directory, it goes right through like
> > a sloppy windows install.  If they choose a system directory, it then
> > asks them to choose a root path, e.g. /usr, /usr/local, /opt, etc., and
> > then asks them for the login/password to install it under.  It could
> > even run a quick check in standard places, to see if a version of the
> > current program has already been installed.
> That seems a good idea.
> One thing that puzzles me about directories is that there are lots
> of them where packages can potentially be put in, eg
> /bin, /usr/bin, /sbin, /usr/sbin, /opt, /usr/local/freeware, etc,
> etc.

 Different locations mean different things. /bin stuff is system stuff, to
be used before /usr is mounted. /usr/bin is system-standard binaries.
/usr/X11/bin is X binaries. /sbin are statically linked binaries (although
more prevalently, people think that they are for "sysadmin" binaries.

 /opt is for "packages". Generally big stuff, and commerical packages, when
the company wants to explicitly state what files are theirs, and what are
the rest of the worlds. /usr/local/bin is for locally compiled stuff.

> I think it would be nice if there was a standard that packages in
> Linux by default went in a particular directory, eg
> /opt/<name-of-package>

 Eeeck. No! Although it makes it easy to remove packages "rm -rf
/opt/gnome-0.20", it makes it annoying to have to add directories to your
path, or else symlinks all over the place.

Kate

-- 
"I am Grey. I stand between the candle and the star.
    We are Grey. We stand between the darkness and the light."

John "Kate" Looney, Horizon Open Systems. Sun Microsystems distributor and 
Support centre. Hotline: [+353 1 8055700] Web http://www.hos.horizon.ie/