I've been called a geek before...
Written by David on Wed, 2006-11-29 17:51

but uh... even I dont get what this is about.

Cool. I guess.

Geeks
Written by James on Wed, 2006-11-29 18:06

Hey David,

What's cool about this is that all the Programs are in, shock!, the /Programs folder. If you're using a Mac this just makes sense. But in linux your programs "explode" all over your hard disk. Some parts end up in /bin, other parts in /var, and still other bits end up in /lib. Without a "package manager" linux is a nightmare.

What these guys are doing is borrowing some insight from Apple and storing everything in one central spot. This means that you could, in theory, copy a program to another computer just by copying it's directory in the /Programs directory.

For example, this is how a standard Linux/UNIX distro is layed out:

What's a 'var' or a 'vmlinuz' anyhow? And is my mom expected to know not to delete it?

James Andres
Lead Developer, Project Opus.

UNIX Directory Structure
Written by LrdEclpse on Thu, 2006-11-30 05:04

Actually, they do not ditch the standard UNIX directory structure at all. It exists in it's entirety. They use a very common *NIX command to create symlinks so that all directories point to a couple of "common" locations. I've been doing this for years now, most UNIX/Linux users do the same type of thing. Though, not quite to this extreme.

What GoboLinux does different, though, is they have a Kernel module that is installed by default that hides the main directory structure. Actually, that part is similar to Apple as well. The same UNIX directory structure lives on in OS X, but is hidden by default. You have to explicitily tell the OS you want to see the full directory structure before you can see how all the symlinks work around the system.

*NIX admins love symlinks.

True
Written by James on Thu, 2006-11-30 10:55

You are 100% correct

James Andres
Lead Developer, Project Opus.

whoa..
Written by kay on Thu, 2006-11-30 11:22

dropping in on this thread is like realizing you've walked into the wrong bathroom.

(this would be me, turning around slowly and then running like hell).

i'm going back to the happy place ~ music!!

Heh
Written by James on Thu, 2006-11-30 11:32

Hey, we're trying to smoke in this bathroom. Close the dang door!

James Andres
Lead Developer, Project Opus.

not at my school they weren't
Written by kay on Thu, 2006-11-30 14:35

all our of our geeks had shirts you could swear were glued inside their pants and ventilators...you guys are cool!

Silly capitalization
Written by at2000 on Sun, 2006-12-03 01:03

I cannot figure out how they intend to capitalize the names.

Why TeTeX but Texinfo? (both are from the root "TeX")
Why ALSA-Lib but Flac? (FLAC = Free Lossless Audio Codec)
Why HTTPD but Iptables? (IP is an acronym so is HTTP)
Why InetUtils but Intltool? (should we capitalize the second word)

I would consider these changes to make them more meaningful:

Aumix => AuMix
Autoconf => AutoConf
Automake => AutoMake
Bash => BASh
Flac => FLAC
Fontconfig => FontConfig
Htop => HTop
InetUtils => INetUtils
Intltool => IntlTool
Iptables => IPTables
Pango => PanGo
Pkgconfig => PkgConfig
Popt => POpt
Sudo => SUDo
Swfdec => SWFDec
Sysklogd => SysKLogD
Texinfo => TeXInfo

Of course names like BASh and SUDo are too stupid, but they are inferred from a uniform naming convention.

Didn't notice that
Written by James on Tue, 2006-12-05 11:42

Wierd, I hadn't noticed that before. Probably they assumed it would be easier to stick to capitilizing the first letter and having the rest lower case (very similar to Apple's conventions?).

I guess if this trend (gobo's directory structure) catches on the individual projects will need to complain to get their names capitilized correctly.

Heck, they can always add more sym links!!

Ok, maybe that's going a bit too far.

James Andres
Lead Developer, Project Opus.