[Gllug] What's so good about Debian?

[Rev Simon Rumble]

On Thu 09 Oct, Richard Jones bloviated thus:

> * The Debian policy means that all applications work the same. eg. They
>   all have their installation files under /etc/<appname> and they all
>   put their user binaries in /usr/bin and so on. This is much cleaner
>   and also means you don't need to go searching for a configuration file,
>   log file or documentation.

This, in my opinion, is Debian's killer feature.

Debian policy strictly states where various types of file MUST be
located.  For example, documentation MUST be stored in
/usr/share/doc/<packagename>.  Configuration files MUST be stored in
/etc/.

If a package stores things somewhere else, it is considered a bug and
the bug is managed by the bug tracking system, which will hassle the
developer to fix it.

The tight integration of the bug tracking system with the packaging
system means that things like this actually get fixed.

Compare and contrast with RedHat which stores things any old where.
All the useful packages are created outside RedHat so are outside
their control, and regardless the RH packages don't adhere to their
own standards anyway.

Examples: squid, last time I checked, stored config files in
/usr/lib/squid.  dhcpd silently fails without any notification until
the user creates a lease file and changes a setting in the config
file.  This isn't documented anywhere (except the bug tracking system,
where it's been since 1999).  Apache is known as "httpd", not "apache"
in rc scripts, config, logs etc.

-- 
Rev Simon Rumble <simon at rumble.net>
www.rumble.net

 "History teaches us that men and nations behave wisely once
  they have exchausted all other alternatives."
- Abba Eban

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