On Sun, 20 Dec 2015 16:55:00 -0800 (PST), Len Ovens wrote: >I can't imagine a Linux without commandline access. In context of Karen's original request, I suspect that with "command line access" also is meant "easy to compile". The tools to build software are available for all distros. However, software often depends on other software, so dependencies could cause issues. Usually developers write software that is based on dependencies that are up-to-date, but for several reasons some distros do not provide up-to-date software. For example Ubuntu, a release model distro provides 2 kind of releases. 1. Long term support releases that usually only get security relevant updates: Nothing else will be updated, not only to provide stability, but also to provide a steady work-flow. Employers can't train employees each month using new software releases. 2. Half year releases: But even those releases do not provide up-to-date software, when they get released the provided software could be outdated since month. For example Arch Linux is a rolling release. It always provides current stable software releases from upstream. There are other important policies. Some distros try to make maintaining Linux user space easy for noobs, but that's not necessarily a pleasure for power-users. A policy to auto-start everything that could be auto-started, to automatically install some optional dependencies and to not install some other optional dependencies by default could become a PITA for for inexperienced users and power-users with special needs such as audio production. Some distros exclude software with disputed licenses. Linuxsample is the most famous example, most likely available by third party repositories for e.g. Ubuntu. Some distros do not split packages into binaries and source code packages. Some distros do not install header files that are needed to build software from source code by default. The package names are not equal to the upstream names. Usually those distros provide tools to automatically install build dependencies. Other distros keep the names from upstream and by default header files are installed, when installing the binaries. Tools might allow to prohibit installing files, e.g. headers for those distros, assumed somebody does not want to install everything provided by a package. FWIW even the concept of packages could be very different. Arch Linux for example in addition to the packages provides a FreeBSD ports like approach. Regards, Ralf _______________________________________________ Linux-audio-user mailing list Linux-audio-user@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx http://lists.linuxaudio.org/listinfo/linux-audio-user
