At 06:08 PM 10/2/02 +0100, geoff wrote: >Many thanks to Chuck and Ray for interesting replies. > >I am reminded that Debian Woody uses ext2, but SuSE 8.0 uses reiserfs.
There is no requirement that all filesystems used by a kernel be the same type; the ability to combine ext2 and iso9660 (CD-ROM) filesystems is the most familiar example of this flexibility. I doubt Woody's stock kernel contains support for reiserfs, but I believe a custom kernel can add it in (Debian kernels are quite standard in most respects). I bet that the SuSE kernel already supports ext2 as well as reiserfs (but if not, once again, a custom kernel could fix this). >I wonder if pushed to an extreme, could one kernel work with two >(simultaneous/combined) distros, chosing the best bits of each :-) Well ... Lawson has for years talked here about his "SlackHat" system, combining the part he likes of Slackware with the parts he likes of Red Hat (I prefer "he likes" to "best bits" because "best" is not well defined). And my Debian systems include some packages not distributed through the Debian packaging system (though they come from the creators directly, not via some other distro). Except when a particular distro is missing a particular package, I think this "best bits" approach create more work then benefit for the everyday Linux user. A principal strength of ANY modern Linux distro is its packaging system, which does a lot of the work for you of handling dependencies, simplifying security (and other) upgrades, and providing a coherent framework for the boot/init process, filesystem organization, application configuration, and the like. For the most common apps, the distros don't really differ all that much anyway. For highly specialized apps, you will need from time to time to go outside your distro's packaging system. (This is especially true for non-rpm distros like Slackware and Debian, since some developers package their stuff only as RPMs.) -- -------------------------------------------"Never tell me the odds!"-------- Ray Olszewski -- Han Solo Palo Alto, California, USA [EMAIL PROTECTED] ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-newbie" in the body of a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.linux-learn.org/faqs
