A requests for links really, not any explanations.

Just in case anybody here has read an article or blog where the structure of different popular linux distibutions are discussed?

I'm referring to how they put files and libraries into the different subdirectories, their startup script style, how they treat defaults, etc.

I guess I'm talking about taking an architectural point of view

I'm going to google right now of course. But I welcome any reading recommendations. Cheers.

the only one that I know is really different is Gobolinux
http://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=gobo

2) Yes I am aware that lots of distros put some files in /lib and others in /usr/lib etc but have no links for you....ditto some put stuff in /usr/bin and others put it in /usr/local/bin and so on

but the structures tend to remain the same.

3) startup scripts AFAIK= Slackware and its derivatives use BSD script styles and the balance use System V or needing a folder for each runlevel

this link goes some way to explain both 2 + 3
http://searchenterpriselinux.techtar...089299,00.html

since you can google I shall let you or others complete your task

oh well ... not much interest in this post.

Possibly, because it's unimportant. Or maybe, it's not so important, but that it's boring.

Maybe I need to write that webpage myself.

More likely, there's just not that much stuff out there to tell you about. Most distributions adhere to the Linux FHS for the most part so they're all pretty much of a muchness.


Best thing to do if you're interested in stuff like this, is just install a few systems on a spare box or in a vm and have a rummage around.

OpenBSD was quite interesting to look at, although I prefer Slackware's hybrid take on bsd style startup scripts to OpenBSD's more traditional bsd approach.

The UNIX filesystem hierarchy has been around for the best part of 40 years now. It's quite amazing really that its still in use today with for the most part, very little change.

Good point...I'd completely forgotten Gobolinux.

Have a look here
http://www.pathname.com/fhs/

anything even vaguely modern should comply ('cept Gobo, of course)
And SuSE confuses people by being a hybrid of the Slackware style and the more mainstream style.

The only other things I can think of are that some Live CDs and mini-distros tend to go their own way by either copying as much as they can to ram or using unionfs, to try to keep down the overhead of reading slow media. And more distros are trying to parallelise some of the start-up stuff to give a faster boot time.

hi,

sorry aus9, it looked as if I discounted your reply. I didn't mean to.

I suppose a few quality replies like those given here is better than lots of ninkumpoop ones.

In any case I was just wondering about this situation.

Thanks for the leads!

Arch Linux has BSD-ish scripts, with simplicity (not ease of use!) as the main focus.

http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/...h_boot_process

well I hate to be a spoilsport but AFAIK Linux is not BSD and so BSD's should not be considered linux.

I forgot to consider live cds and their like tho so good point salasi.

udev and hal have somewhat affected how some distros now mount removeable media....traditionally I think under /mnt but now quite often under /media

Err, no one said that linux is BSD; that would be a bit daft, wouldn't it?