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-   -   Slackware not LSB-compliant? (https://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/slackware-14/slackware-not-lsb-compliant-4175462458/)

irgunII 05-20-2013 06:37 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by kikinovak (Post 4953842)

LMFAO! Good one Kikinovak!

edorig 05-20-2013 07:57 AM

Thanks for your link wildwizard. This whole "linux advocacy" is ridiculous beyond belief. What about closing the
thread ? We know that LSB does not amount to much, except (1) having paid a lot to get certified and (2) having some
minimal compatibility with RedHat, opinions of random bloggers notwithstanding. Incompatibility with an ISO/ANSI standard, an IEEE standard, or a standard established by a group of Unix vendors such as the Open Group could be an issue, depending on its severity (i. e. does it make a source package non portable, does it prevents interoperability etc...). Possible issues when installing a binary designed for another Linux distribution on Slackware are unavoidable. In fact, even installing CentOS 6.1 software (xmgr) on Scientific Linux 6.1 (both RHEL clones) can fail, simply because SL has upgraded one library (netCDF) while CentOS has not.

hitest 05-20-2013 09:22 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by kikinovak (Post 4953842)

Oh my, you caught me off guard with that one, mate! LMAO. :)

dugan 05-20-2013 02:48 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by kabamaru (Post 4954722)
Caitlyn Martin joins LinuxAdvocates

I've read a bit of LinuxAdvocates' content, and I think she's perfect for them.

ReaperX7 05-20-2013 07:03 PM

I actually think Slackware not only follows, but exceeds the LSB standards by promoting the adamant usage of non-proprietary system software (like systemd which is Linux-only software) unless unavoidable (like udev).

If anything Slackware is the benchmark standard of Linux. Red Hat is far from even being near to any standard other than their own. If anything Slackware is not only closer to the LSB standard than Red Hat, but Slackware is even closer to the SUS (Single UNIX Specification) than any other distribution save Gentoo and LFS maybe.

Richard Cranium 05-20-2013 07:11 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Woodsman (Post 4953867)
Marketing, by nature in the modern world, involves deception and sleight-of-hand.

By nature? I think not.

In practice? Much more often than it should be.

Woodsman 05-20-2013 07:51 PM

Quote:

By nature? I think not.
In practice? Much more often than it should be.
Okay --- in practice. :)

[Off topic]
Modern marketing is horribly deceptive and misleading. Just this weekend I read some articles about the birth and growth of the dry cereal business. Almost completely built upon deceptive marketing. Another example of deceptive marketing is the contents of a loaf of bread.
[/Off topic]

Regardless, this practice of deceptive marketing has infested almost all facets of our modern life. Software is no exception. :(

Richard Cranium 05-20-2013 10:42 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Woodsman (Post 4955332)
Regardless, this practice of deceptive marketing has infested almost all facets of our modern life. Software is no exception. :(

Well, view it as an extended IQ test. Or a different type of test that rewards paranoia.

kikinovak 05-21-2013 12:29 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Woodsman (Post 4955332)
Regardless, this practice of deceptive marketing has infested almost all facets of our modern life. Software is no exception. :(

I like Slackware's marketing concept and try to apply it as much as possible to my own little company (http://www.microlinux.fr). Slackware offers what seems to me like a healthy mix of sustainability, transparency, understatement, sane pricing and word-of-mouth.

(Mostly due to my character, I'm yet struggling with the understatement bit. :D)

gargamel 05-21-2013 03:09 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ReaperX7 (Post 4955302)
I actually think Slackware not only follows, but exceeds the LSB standards by promoting the adamant usage of non-proprietary system software (like systemd which is Linux-only software) unless unavoidable (like udev).

If anything Slackware is the benchmark standard of Linux. Red Hat is far from even being near to any standard other than their own. If anything Slackware is not only closer to the LSB standard than Red Hat, but Slackware is even closer to the SUS (Single UNIX Specification) than any other distribution save Gentoo and LFS maybe.


Hmm, I'd put it a bit differently. Slackware is closer to the (actually useful) goals of LSB than some of the LSB creators. I doubt that Slackware would be more successful in LSB certification tests than Red Hat or SUSE, but I was able to get packages running on Slackware that wouldn't run on OpenSUSE. There's only one exception: I was able to run KMyMoney2 with HBCI support (German online banking standard) only on OpenSUSE, but on no other distro I tried, not even Slkackware 32-bit.

It's just, that some of the packages required to set a symlink or tweak a path at build time. So Slackware may not be LSB compliant by definition (of LSB), but IMHO Slackware achieves the goals of LSB even better than the creators of this debated standard.

Conclusion:
  • Is Slackware LSB compliant?
    Strictly speaking and by definition: No.
  • Does this affect any Slackware user in any way?
    Not, at all.
  • Does this affect a system administrator, who wants to use Slackware in an enterprise environment?
    Unfortunately, in the real world it does. Admins must convince their managers, but managers don't want to be responsible, they prefer to spend the money of investors and cut head count to save money, in order to buy kind of an insurance. That's what a certificate and a contract with a large vendor are in their eyes: Insurances, that cover their back.
  • If managers insist in certification and contracts, how can Debian be so successful in enterprise environments?
    Debian has been chosen especially by banks and insurances as a desktop (client) system. Some use it on their servers, too. There are a few reasons for this, that also explain, why Slackware isn't used as much in the same environments:
    1. If you can convince a manager that free software is actually a good thing to mitigate risks of vendor lock-in etc., he or she will insist in using free software and not to take any risk of law suits due to patent or licence violation in non-free or non-open-source software coming with your distro. In my experience, managers support free software when they just have had a bitter experience with some of their commercial vendors, and when they realize, how much they depend on one or another software vendor. In such a situation, however, they'll try to avoid finding themselves in a similar position again, a few years later, and therefore are open for FOSS. That's one reason, why they find Debian quite appealing, more than other distributions.
    2. Another reason are the huge software repositories and the package management. Slackware users know about the pros and cons of dependency reason probably better than anyone else, and that's why we don't want it. ;) But as we all have to admit, for a beginner dpkg and the tools supporting it make it rather easy and painless to keep the system up-to-date for a while (as long as the package maintainers do a proper job and the package manager doesn't screw the whole system) even with little Linux experience. And we all know, that it is an uphill battle trying to convince a user of Debian or *buntu or OpenSUSE of the advantages of package management without automatic dependency resolution. It's like telling a child that the stove is hot --- as long as the child hasn't touched a hot stove, it will not even know, what you're talking about.
    3. Finally, some consulting firms advise companies willing to use Linux on desktops to choose Debian. Their arguments are, again, package management, and the fact that it does not depend on a particular company, but is a community project. The consultants tell their clients, that these would be "strategic assets". (And for some part, they definitely are).


Best regards

gargamel

commandlinegamer 05-21-2013 06:17 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jenni (Post 4954152)
It HAS been done, however. Unifix Linux is (or was not sure it's still around) completely POSIX.1 compliant and I *think* was even certified as such: http://www.unifix.de/products/unifix_2_0/

Wow, that's a blast from the past! Never used it mind you. A search for related stuff led me to this page. Amusing to see the number of major distros back then:

http://www.ru.j-npcs.org/usoft/WWW/w...tribution.html

When you mentioned it, my first thought was of this, a later project which also ran out of steam:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Linux

ReaperX7 05-21-2013 09:22 PM

Isn't SuSE somewhat based on Slackware however?

dugan 05-21-2013 09:50 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ReaperX7 (Post 4956184)
Isn't SuSE somewhat based on Slackware however?

Er, what?

ReaperX7 05-21-2013 09:55 PM

Yep, SUSE was based on Slackware an an extension of it, at least in it's early years.

JWJones 05-21-2013 10:35 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ReaperX7 (Post 4956184)
Isn't SuSE somewhat based on Slackware however?

Yup. "In the early days, the young company sold sets of floppy disks containing a German edition of Slackware Linux, but it wasn't long before SuSE Linux became an independent distribution with the launch of version 4.2 in May 1996."


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