[olug] linux web server management ?

[Daniel G. Linder]

Jonathan Warren wrote:
> I don't understand why the distros must be interchangable?  
> Stick with a distro and request missing packages from them.  
> I don't think you can expect open source projects to all 
> follow the same config.  The config is only really needed at 
> compile time and a devleoper is going to spend his time 
> making something functional and not easy to compile.  That 
> always comes later.  The distros should handle dependencies 
> and configs.  

This is what leads to the rest of the software industry saying "We
support Linux!"  In their minds, "Linux" == "RedHat" and excludes
"Mandrake", "Slackware", "Gentoo", etc.  Sure, 90% of those
closed-source programs will probably work on the others, but for
something that requires a driver module and/or user-space binaries (i.e.
a new video card, SCSI card, etc) then their developers have to search
out how to support each distributions way of configuring said card.
Some might have a script in /etc/XXX, others keep their scrips in
/usr/local/XXX, yet again some might want to tie everything into
"linuxconf" and configure it that way.

Dan