<div dir="ltr"><div class="gmail_quote">On Tue, May 11, 2010 at 7:43 PM, Shlomi Fish <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:shlomif@iglu.org.il">shlomif@iglu.org.il</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex;">
<div class="im">On Tuesday 11 May 2010 16:04:29 Amos Shapira wrote:<br>
> On 11 May 2010 22:01, geoffrey mendelson <<a href="mailto:geoffreymendelson@gmail.com">geoffreymendelson@gmail.com</a>><br>
wrote:<br>
> > On May 11, 2010, at 2:52 PM, Dotan Cohen wrote:<br>
> >> Ubuntu packages three Javas, but only the Sun Java has any worth. The<br>
> >> other two only serve to mess up Sun Java installs. Stay away from<br>
> >> them.<br>
> ><br>
> > Ouch, that brings back another UBUNTU problem. It does not install Java<br>
> > (are most programs) in /usr/bin. It installs them in /usr/bin under<br>
> > another name, or eleswhere. Then it links /etc/alternatives/<name> to<br>
> > them. Then it links /usr/bin/<name> to /etc/alternatives/<name>.<br>
><br>
> That's actually part of the inheritance from Debian. Debian tends to<br>
> have a long history behind most of their decisions so this system<br>
> makes sense there. I'm not sure how different is Ubuntu from it<br>
> though.<br>
><br>
<br>
</div>Last time I checked (Debian 3.1 or so), Debian did not take the<br>
/etc/alternatives system to its natural conclusion though. I noticed that when<br>
I wanted to install postfix on what was then <a href="http://eskimo.iglu.org.il" target="_blank">eskimo.iglu.org.il</a>, I had to<br>
uninstall qmail (which I wanted to get rid of eventually), because the<br>
/usr/sbin/sendmail file conflicted between the two packages. Later on, when I<br>
worked on Fedora, I was able to install Postfix as well as sendmail (the<br>
Fedora default) because I could play with the symlinks in /etc/alternatives<br>
and other places. It's possible it was fixed in Debian since then.<br></blockquote><div><br></div><div>qmail was not packaged in Debian since it was non-free, not sure about its status nowadays. If you install something yourself or from an unofficial package you can not blame Debian for its failures.</div>
<div><br></div><div>Baruch</div></div></div>