[ale] Linux Distributions

[mhw at wittsend.com (Michael H. Warfield)]

> Well, whenever you start talking distributions, we all want to put in our
> two cents. I was brought up on Slackware and migrated to Red Hat for most 
> of the reasons already mentioned. I do want to point out, rpm can be used
> for Slackware if you really like BSD init (www.rpm.org), and I too have had 
> occasional problems with Red Hat install/upgrades. 

> About the relocation of config file that Mike mentioned above, although I
> was a little lost at first, I much prefer this. IMHO config files belong in
> /etc and libraries belong in lib. It always irked me when certain commercial
> Un*xes would place binaries (i.e. ping) in /etc, thats what the (s)bin's are
> for.

	This is actually kind of humorous because "/sbin" is a relative
newcomer on the block.  The use of /etc for administrative utilities
(and /stand for standalone utilities) dates way WAY back.  They're just
doing things the old "traditional" way.  Sun, I believe, originated the
convention of "/var" for system variable directories so that / and /usr
file systems could be mounted read-only.  I'm not exactly sure where in
the evolutionary line "/sbin" and "/usr/sbin" appeared although I don't
mourn the extinction of "/stand"...  :-)

	It would be entertaining to do an evolutionary tree of when certain
conventions made there appearance and when certain others became extinct
(for all practical purposes).

> Later 
> Jay
> 
> --------------------------------------------------------
> E-Mail: Jay Munsterman<jmunster at mindspring.com>
> Date: 30-Sep-97
> Time: 08:53:12
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