this post was submitted on 25 Jan 2024
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From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).
Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.
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You may be interested in reading this post about the process of packaging Steam.
tl;dr: It's mostly an annoyance reserved for packagers to deal with. Dynamically linked executables can be patched in a fairly universal fashion to work without FHS, so that's the go-to approach. If the executable is statically linked, the package may have to ship a source patch instead. If the executable is statically linked & close-source, the packagers are forced to resort to simulating an FHS environment via chroot.
So that means packaging software for nix is a pain, compared to, say, gentoo or arch's AUR, but only for a small subset of packages.
I'll keep this in mind as I'm exploring if I should switch from Gentoo.