Common problems with Ubuntu

[Shlomi Fish]

On Tuesday 11 May 2010 16:04:29 Amos Shapira wrote:
> On 11 May 2010 22:01, geoffrey mendelson <geoffreymendelson at gmail.com> 
wrote:
> > On May 11, 2010, at 2:52 PM, Dotan Cohen wrote:
> >> Ubuntu packages three Javas, but only the Sun Java has any worth. The
> >> other two only serve to mess up Sun Java installs. Stay away from
> >> them.
> > 
> > Ouch, that brings back another UBUNTU problem. It does not install Java
> > (are most programs) in /usr/bin. It installs them in /usr/bin under
> > another name, or eleswhere. Then it links /etc/alternatives/<name> to
> > them. Then it links /usr/bin/<name> to /etc/alternatives/<name>.
> 
> That's actually part of the inheritance from Debian. Debian tends to
> have a long history behind most of their decisions so this system
> makes sense there. I'm not sure how different is Ubuntu from it
> though.
> 

Last time I checked (Debian 3.1 or so), Debian did not take the 
/etc/alternatives system to its natural conclusion though. I noticed that when 
I wanted to install postfix on what was then eskimo.iglu.org.il, I had to 
uninstall qmail (which I wanted to get rid of eventually), because the 
/usr/sbin/sendmail file conflicted between the two packages. Later on, when I 
worked on Fedora, I was able to install Postfix as well as sendmail (the 
Fedora default) because I could play with the symlinks in /etc/alternatives 
and other places. It's possible it was fixed in Debian since then.

Regards,

	Shlomi Fish

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