[FreeNX-kNX] freenx is dead !

[Kurt Pfeifle]

Simone Piccardi wrote:
> Fabian Franz wrote:
>> - Copy Sources to /usr/NX/bin
>>
>> $ cp nx* /usr/NX/bin/
>>
>> - Copy node.conf to /usr/NX/etc
>>
>> $ cp node.conf.sample /usr/NX/etc/node.conf
>>
>> - Run nxsetup
>>
>> /usr/NX/bin/nxsetup --install --setup-nomachine-key
>>
>> - Done!
>>
> Hi,
> yes, these instructions are quite clear, but I do not understand why it
> is necessary to do a violation of the filesystem hierarchy standard and
> use a separate /usr/NX/ directory for everything (also for the
> configuration file, that should be in /etc).
> 
> Just curiosity, because I cannot see any reason to do this.
> 
> Regards
> Simone

One-word-answer: legacy.


Many-words-answer:

Not so long ago, X11 itself was "in violation" of the filesystem hier-
archy standard, and installed everything into the /usr/X11/ directory.

As you may be aware, NX is in a way a fork from X11 (to a small degree,
to a much larger degree it is an extension of X11), and it is designed
to be installed and used without conflicting with the original X11, but
run side-by-side with it.

When the NoMachine developers started their long, arduous journey of
spadework to develop the NX core libraries (something a lot of people do
not know, tend to forget or willfully ignore), they obviously didn't
want to start with doing the least important but most boring work first:
re-arrange the original X11 sources to comply with some obscure not-yet-
fully adopted FHS spec of the time (and where X11 itself still didn't do
it either), *before* even adding a single line of their own code.

If anybody seriously expects that, he's an armchair theoretician whose
opinion can't be considered to be much relevant (boy, can I be polite
these days....)

The initial NX development took several years, and all that time the No-
Machine developers kept tracking many changes and improvements to X11.

It was the easiest and most efficient way to get a working NX code base
by using a cloned X11 source directory tree as the base to start (and
keep going).

Making a forked X11-tree to host the NX extensions development just to
comply with FHS would have been a f***ing waste of time, especially be-
cause this would have been required to be re-done again and again, when-
ever the developers upgraded to a newer X11 version.

Once NX was beyond a proof of concept, and had their first working im-
plementation running, and even released to the public (that was a few
years *after* they started their work) of course, that was still not
the time when a transformation to FHS would create any advantage -- not
for end users, nor for NX developers.

Meanwhile X11 has moved and became the FHS-compliant software now known
as 'Xorg', but NX still is based off an older X11 version that was
hosted at /usr/X11/.

Just like initially it was too much work with no advantage to move NX to
FHS when X11 itself was still in /usr/X11/ -- in the near future it very
likely will be too much work with not much advantages to move NX back to
/usr/NX/ once they start using the newer FHS'ed Xorg.

----

I hope you can now afford to stop caring about the rather unimportant
sideline issues around NX-based software....

-- 
Kurt Pfeifle
System & Network Printing Consultant ---- Linux/Unix/Windows/Samba/CUPS
Infotec Deutschland GmbH  .....................  Hedelfinger Strasse 58
A RICOH Company  ...........................  D-70327 Stuttgart/Germany