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Power Member
Raiden's Realm disse:Ok, here's something that's been going through my mind lately and I think it needs to be brought to the forefront, just like some of the other topics I've mentioned lately, such as my Distro Implosion article. But this time, instead of discussing the state of Linux distribution lists and distros in general, I think we need to discuss standardization. Yes, that dreaded word.
While this seems like a bit of a non-subject, or even a mundane one, I still feel it should be discussed. First off, there are over thirty five different package distribution systems available out there. Thirty five! Just like the excess of Linux distributions, that's just too many. I'm not saying we should suddenly end choice in the Linux world. That's not what I said in my previous article, and that's not what I'm saying now. I'm all for choice. But I'm also a realist. You can't expect Linux to succeed in the world if there isn't standardization at least in this area. Or take this for example. Shagbag, one of our forum moderators, made this interesting observation about Linux:
It seems every linux distro has its own way of configuring network access. For example:
Fedora: /etc/sysconfig/networking/devices/ifcfg-eth0
Archlinux: /etc/rc.conf
Ubuntu: /etc/network/interfaces
And that's just the tip of the iceberg. I won't even go into all the nuttiness that exists out there. Sure, there's some standardization across all the distributions, but it's so little as to be difficult to spot. That shouldn't be the case, ever. Because of that, each distribution, or distribution group has to have their own custom built version of a given application for their own version of Linux. Another forum member, stolennomenclature had this to say about that:
I feel sorry for the application developers who want to supply binary packages, and need to build sometimes dozens of packages for all the different distros and their various incompatible versions. Of course in real life they seldom do - so the poor user is faced with having to try and compile the application from source if a binary package does not exist for their distro.
I think he makes an excellent point! Even the package systems are too diversified. As I said before, choice is good, but not on the core system, and packages are part of the core system. Sure, choice is important and choice is good. I very strongly support choice. But I'm a realist and reality says that sometimes choice can also be your own worst enemy. You can standardize the core of Linux, yet still leave users with all the choice they could ever want. And if we don't start standardizing at least the important things, Microsoft is going to beat us over the head. One of their biggest clubs against us is that we've got such a wide range of diversity, while they have a standardized one stop shop.
Really, seriously. Think about it. Who needs fifteen different ways to do network configuration? Or how about hardware detection? Why do we need some 100 different systems for hardware detection? Everyone should get together, pool their resources, and come up with one, two, maybe even three really, really good hardware detection systems and then have everyone use them. Or how about the directory file tree? I absolutely hate it when each distribution has its own unique way to do the directory structure for system and user files. Everyone pick one thing that works, and run with it. Don't create a thousand unique ways to do things.
Resto do artigo aqui.
Infelizmente, é verdade.