[Xastir] Directories/Ubuntu

[Tom Russo]

On Tue, Mar 06, 2007 at 07:56:24AM -0800, we recorded a bogon-computron collision of the <archer at eskimo.com> flavor, containing:
> On Tue, 6 Mar 2007, Peter Maxfield wrote:
> 
> > Part of this exercise is intended to get me familiar with linux in more
> > detail.  Believe me, I don't like looking and sounding like an idiot.  I do
> > that easily enough in my normal day to day activities.  However, if Ubuntu
> > is non-standard, what is?  There are so many distro's out there, I only
> > picked Ubuntu because Xubuntu was in the VMplayer release of Xastir.
> >
> > Now, I am not trying to start a war here.  I'm just trying to learn.  Should
> > I restart this project with a Debian or FC distro?  I don't want to keep
> > imposing on this group by being non-standard.  You guys (and girls) have
> > been great to me!
> 
> There are enough people on here to where Ubuntu or Kubuntu are
> probably good options for getting mailing list support.

The only real "non-standard" deal is this business of the default-disabling
of root login --- and for years users have been getting admonished not to 
log in as root for security and safety reasons, so really it's not a huge deal.
More and more we've been suggesting using "sudo" instead (some of our 
documentation leans that way), and some of our scripts even use sudo.
Getting a root shell is useful for sysadmin types and those who don't like it
when things get in our way, but root shells are a very blunt instrument that
should not be wielded lightly by most users.

Elevating "sudo" to a default rather than a best-practice is really the only
non-standard thing I've seen for Ubuntu mentioned here.  The package
installation stuff is similar to (and based on) debian, and building xastir is 
the same as on any other linux platform once the dependencies are in place.

As Rick Green points out it is not difficult to re-enable root login, but
the average user is discouraged from doing so by the documentation.

One can also do "sudo -i" to get a root shell, so there's hardly any real
reason for most people to enable root login anyway.

> I was just venting a bit about the non-standard stuff and hoping
> that people would keep the docs issue in perspective.

Indeed.  The documentation is written for generic linux/unix, and mostly
describes full source-code installation of everything.  Soon as you drop in
package management all that goes to the wind anyway --- there are too many 
different systems out there (rpm, apt, gentoo and BSD's ports, etc.)

> Really, nearly _any_ Unix/Linux is a good thing to move to, whether
> it follows some generally accepted standard for
> commands/administration methods or not.
> 
> Stick with what you've got if it's working.  There's plenty of time
> later to get opinionated as to what's the best Linux.  I've had a
> few years to do it myself (like nearly 15).  ;-)

Ubuntu is a fine choice for a first linux system, as its installation is easy
and most of its administration is simple.  When you start getting into
development and source code builds you have to jump through a few extra hoops,
but once you're set up to do it they're all the same.

-- 
Tom Russo    KM5VY   SAR502   DM64ux          http://www.swcp.com/~russo/
Tijeras, NM  QRPL#1592 K2#398  SOC#236 AHTB#1 http://kevan.org/brain.cgi?DDTNM
"And, isn't sanity really just a one-trick pony anyway? I mean all you get is
 one trick, rational thinking, but when you're good and crazy, oooh, oooh,
 oooh, the sky is the limit!"  --- The Tick