Linux filesystem layout

[miriam_e]

I've mentioned before what a shambles the linux file layout is. The proof is in the pudding. I've spent all day trying to get working a few things on my linux machine that took a couple of minutes installing on MSWindows... and I feel like I'm not much closer to getting it working than I was when I started. Gaaaah!

MSWindows is like a monstrous, rickety structure of patches upon patches, but linux is not much better with the file layout littered with legacy directories, and files that expect things to be in one place, but another thing expecting them elsewhere, and then you get all the different incompatibilities between many incremental versions... Oh boy!

Did I mention how much I hate working on computers?

Comments

[annie-lyne.livejournal.com]

I don't have time to write a more detailed response (will do this evening), but how are you installing these things? What package management software are you using?

[miriam-e.livejournal.com]

A nice, clear mind you have -- straight to the center of the problem.

Puppy has dotpup installation packages and pupget as a package handler, unfortunately, because Puppy is a fairly new distribution many things don't exist as dotpup packages yet. The cool thing about dotpup packages is that they attempt to make software installation as straightforward as it is on MSWindows by running an install script that checks various things before installing the software. But, as I say, many things are not yet available as dotpup packages so I have to adapt stuff made for other distributions. I've been mainly using Fedora rpm packages. I uncompress them and work out where the contents go, copying them by hand, trying to make sure I put them where Puppy expects them.

Also I have to compile some things myself, which is fine when it works, but that is fraught with all kinds of delicate dependencies too.

It took me some time to work out that python has an odd way if working out what "site-packages" are installed. There are .pth files for some (but not needed for all -- still trying to understand why) of the Lib software it uses. Putting the .pth file didn't seem to actually do anything till I ran an obscure little python script called site.py... I can't find any of this documented prominently, I just stumble upon it in my obsessive way.

I don't know if I should give up on trying to get all this stuff working with Puppy. It would be nice, because Puppy is so lean and fast and the 3d stuff I want to do would work so much better on a machine where lots of power didn't get sucked by the OS.

But I have a Debian distribution on one of my machines. Maybe I should try doing this stuff on it. [sigh]

(Thanks for putting up with me rambling on... it honestly helps me get my head in order.)