Posted by: Anonymous Coward
on November 04, 2005 08:58 AM
Maybe I'm completely off base but my understanding is that you have a standard POSIX that defines a number of things.
EG. pipes,<nobr> <wbr></nobr>/bin,<nobr> <wbr></nobr>/lib, how files are treated, cp, cat, mv and a number of other core programs.
While this is good and means that it is easy to port apps from Freebsd to Openbsd to Linux to Solaris etc it doesn't mean it will just run.
The LSB tries to standardise more. Some of the things I'm aware of are<nobr> <wbr></nobr>/media for cdroms and usb sticks. DBUS for automatic hardware detection. Various extensions for X.
Also as far as I knew it didn't require you to use their binaries BUT the binaries that are used REQUIRE a specific ABI (I think) so other programs can link to it.
This basically means you have a couple of options.
1. Code to POSIX and Standard X - A rather limited environment that doesn't include binary compatibility or many features. 2. Code to a specific Distribution. Rich environment but limits your customer base. 3. Code to minimum of a set of distributions. Not as rich as a single distribution but a bigger customer base also you'll have to do a release for each distribution as they are all a little bit different. (This is what tends to happen at the moment) 4. Code to the LSB. Not as rich as a single Distribution BUT YOU ONLY HAVE TO HAVE ONE RELEASE. If you look at a lot of packages at the moment you've have about 5+ different release. Redhat 7.3 Redhat ES 2.1 Redhat ES 4 SuSe 8 SuSe 9 Mandrake 6 etc. While the LSB won't get rid of the old distributions it's aim it to make it better in the future. Instead of: Redhat 2006 Redhat 2007 Redhat 2008 Redhat 2009 SuSe 2006 SuSe 2007 SuSe 2008 SuSe 2009 Mandrake 2006 Mandrake 2007 Mandrake 2008 Mandrake 2009 you'd have LSB 2.1 LSB 3.7
That is my understanding. The only other thing that it seems to be doing is getting new stuff locked down and working between KDE and Gnome and getting new stuff into X (DBUS and some X extensions)
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Re:Clueless, so asking
Posted by: Anonymous Coward on November 04, 2005 08:58 AMEG. pipes,<nobr> <wbr></nobr>/bin,<nobr> <wbr></nobr>/lib, how files are treated, cp, cat, mv and a number of other core programs.
While this is good and means that it is easy to port apps from Freebsd to Openbsd to Linux to Solaris etc it doesn't mean it will just run.
The LSB tries to standardise more. Some of the things I'm aware of are<nobr> <wbr></nobr>/media for cdroms and usb sticks. DBUS for automatic hardware detection. Various extensions for X.
Also as far as I knew it didn't require you to use their binaries BUT the binaries that are used REQUIRE a specific ABI (I think) so other programs can link to it.
This basically means you have a couple of options.
1. Code to POSIX and Standard X - A rather limited environment that doesn't include binary compatibility or many features.
2. Code to a specific Distribution. Rich environment but limits your customer base.
3. Code to minimum of a set of distributions. Not as rich as a single distribution but a bigger customer base also you'll have to do a release for each distribution as they are all a little bit different. (This is what tends to happen at the moment)
4. Code to the LSB. Not as rich as a single Distribution BUT YOU ONLY HAVE TO HAVE ONE RELEASE. If you look at a lot of packages at the moment you've have about 5+ different release.
Redhat 7.3
Redhat ES 2.1
Redhat ES 4
SuSe 8
SuSe 9
Mandrake 6
etc.
While the LSB won't get rid of the old distributions it's aim it to make it better in the future. Instead of:
Redhat 2006
Redhat 2007
Redhat 2008
Redhat 2009
SuSe 2006
SuSe 2007
SuSe 2008
SuSe 2009
Mandrake 2006
Mandrake 2007
Mandrake 2008
Mandrake 2009
you'd have
LSB 2.1
LSB 3.7
That is my understanding. The only other thing that it seems to be doing is getting new stuff locked down and working between KDE and Gnome and getting new stuff into X (DBUS and some X extensions)
That is my impression anyway.
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