On Fri, 2003-01-03 at 06:14, Michael Adams wrote: > Forgive my stupidity, but i thought Linux was based on the System V system > and BSD (Berkley System Distribution) was a different flavour of Unix to > Linux. Not all unices are the same but Linux is heading to the posix/LSB > standard to make it easier for more program compatability.
In the beginning, linux as a whole was pretty unjelled. Some distros mirrored the BSD filesystem (BSD in this context and below meaning a reference to the filesystem and not the distro in toto) and others like Red Hat went straight for a System V layout. I'm glad they did that, because it directly influenced Mandrake. To be fair though, my post was a rather gestapoish letter with respect to BSD influence, blowing off some steam on the frustrations I've had with Slackware in the past. In all fairness, there have been quite a few ideas taken from the BSD side and integrated into Linux as a whole. If I remember correctly, the /proc filesystem was one such example of a BSD rip. By and large, tho...IMO the present Filesystem Hierarchy Standard (FHS) is more of a System V layout with handy addons than it is anything else. > Of course non-standard versions will and should occur where somebody thinks > they have a better way. Time, testing and adoption practises hopefully will > prevail in proving this correct or not (Advertising and monetary backing > meant VHS prevailed over Beta). > </newbie crawls off soapbox and hides under bed> > > I have noticed on my short time on this list that most questions should have > been posted <newbie> first anyway. > > > Here's a layout of a BSD filesystem: > > > > http://www.washington.edu/R870/img/BSD-dir.gif > > > > Layout of System V: > > > > http://www.washington.edu/R870/img/V4-dir.gif > > > > System V filesystems are very highly organized and use directory > > structure to great advantage in categorization, which is what it's > > supposed to be used for. For instance, Sys V /etc uses subdirs to > > categorize configuration and initialization files. Sys V /dev > > categorizes device files in subs also as another example. > > > > BSD file structures *by contrast* are not very organized. In fact BSD > > is kind of annoying, if you want to know the truth about it. One thing > > that used to fry my eggs was the way everything was just dumped into > > /etc; no subs. Another was the lack of a decent comprehensive organized > > system of initialization files. I can pretty much nutshell it by saying > > that the most annoying thing about BSD is that it's not System V. --LX -- ��������������������������������������������������� Kernel 2.4.18-6mdk Mandrake Linux 8.2 Enlightenment 0.16.5-11mdk Evolution 1.0.2-5mdk Registered Linux User #268899 http://counter.li.org/ ���������������������������������������������������
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