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Re: Downloading types



Noam Meltzer wrote:
>
> I had the normal d/l, it said "Version: stable <ver.>"

Stable means you use the normal "production-quality" version,
you should expect it to work good and not have serious bugs and
problems.
An example of this is the even-numbered linux versions.

Unstable means the beta/alpha/whatever "developer" version,
which is being developed and may have bugs in it.
Usually it is not recommended to use such version when it's critical
that it will work 100%.
An example of this would be the odd-numbered versions of the linux
kernel.

> and I had "Binaries: <Generic, RPM, Static, FreeBSD, Debian>"

Generic means a tarball (.tar.gz file) with the binaries.
You can easily untar it anywhere, some of these files have install
scripts.

RPM: Redhat Package Manager, which is the de-facto standard for packages
in linux.
It is used in redhat (and redhat based distributions), caldera, suse,
and many more.

Debian: .deb files which are the packages used in the debian
distribution.
AFAIK, Currently only debian uses them, but in the future "LaetOS" and
the Corel Distributions will use them as well.

Static: The binaries are linked in a static fasion (whereas most
binaries you use are synamic).
The difference is that static binaries do not require the shared objects
files to run.
As a result they are bigger in size.

FreeBSD is a UNIX variant of the BSD family.
If you wish to run a program on FreeBSD, it should be a FreeBSD
executable file.
I was told that FreeBSD can run Linux ELF executables, but I am not
sure.

Source means that you download the source of the program, that you will
need to compile for yourself.

> (everything between "<>" is options for d/l)
> A similar question (I think): whats glibc2 and libc2?

Until a recent time,
many distributions used libc5, which is a library that cotains many
basic functions.
However, when RedHat 5.0 was released it used glibc, which is a GNU
implemention of this library.
(Then debian 2.0 joined, and today most distributions use glibc, also
dubbed as libc6)
The problem was that these libraries were not compatible,
so executables that were linked against glibc cannot run properly on
libc5, and vice versa.

Most chances are that you use glibc,
so you better download the glibc version of binaries.

If you're confused,
just download the source and compile... :-)

-- 

The day Microsoft makes something that doesn't suck,
is probably the day they start making vacuum cleaner software...
(I was pointed out that Microsoft hardware usualy works)

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