FHS

S. Lawton green_man at bluefrognet.net
Mon Apr 8 18:07:55 EDT 2002



On 8 Apr 2002, at 11:49, Gregory J. Neumann wrote, in part:

> Yeah, that's an excellent idea, and all the Distro's need to come to some agreement 
> on that pronto!  Although, as I understand it, the various flavors of Unix don't 
> agree eithre ...

The various disrtos seem to be gravitating toward it as they evolve. 
Things I have read say things like "Such and such file may be 
found here, unless you're running GNU/Debian, in which case it is 
found HERE." Aparently, Debian is an absolutely free range 
animal, because it's totally "open", and anyone and everyone has a 
hand in it. 

> Microsoft sort of tries to standardize the filesystem setup w/ the "Program Files" 
> folder in Win95.  It was always fun in the DOS world to try to remember what arcane 
> "8.3" format code a program setup would use! :-(  

They just said, "Now what key is the hardest to find on the 
keyboard because no one ever uses it ?"

"AHA !!! The TILDE !!! That'll fix 'em !!!"


> At least Linux allows more descriptive names!  
> 
> Another thing I'd like to see is a certain basic set of command line configuration 
> tools that's incluted in EVERY Linux Distro.  Such as "xf86config".  I installed, 
> sucessfully, Gentoo Linux this weekend, but I can't find the X-Windows 
> configruation tools. 

I just read that chapter in "Running Linux" this afternoon. It says:
.... the XFree86 documentation in /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/doc . You 
should especially see the file README.config, which is an 
XFree86 configuration tutorial .......

and 

........ you can find the values for many cards in the files 
modeDB.txt, AccelCards and Devices. These files are all in  
/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/doc . In addition, there are various README 
files for certain chipsets ....... 

See if Gentoo put them there, or if it's a mustang like Debian, and 
put them somewhere in /etc. My impression, from my reading, 
having never run it, is that Debian hangs a lot of stuff in /etc that 
most other dists hang right in /usr.  :-)
.
 Again, I'm not looking very hard, but I'd really like to see 
> certain tools agreed upon as standards that you can use to configure a basic setup 
> from the command line.  After all, X-Windows is a GUI that sits over top of the 
> basic system, unlike Windows, it's NOT the system, and you can totally ignore X-
> Windows and still have a very productive machine using text editors, word 
> processors, email programs and web browsers that run very happily and effectively 
> from the command line.  
>
Pretty much what I got from "Running Linux". 
A chapter  on configuring for your monitor, and a separate one on 
window managers, what they do, how, and "they're really neat, but 
not necessary, per se". 



Scott 

Registered Linux User 261118 


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