HD Install :: myDSL Placement
It's your thread, so nothing you say is off-topic =o)
A tarball is a tar file. A tar is a collection of files glued together as a single file. A tar.gz is a tar file which has been compressed with gzip. Generally tar.gz files are source code, but in DSL they can also be myDSL extensions.
A dsl file is a tar.gz renamed...just for the sake of being associated with DSL. The difference in the filenames reflects their contents. tar.gz extensions are installed to /opt, and dsl extensions are installed into the main system.
A uci file is a compressed filesystem which is mounted like a floppy or CD. This allows a DSL user to mount a large application into /opt, run it as if it were installed, and then unmount it when finished. It's a breakthrough in software packaging as far as i'm concerned. I used to think it was silly that a program needed to be installed on a harddrive to run, particularly in Windows where so many apps write to the system's registry, whether or not it's actually necessary. My thought was that programs should be easily run straight from removable media, such as a CD. The uci proves it can be done.
So uci with mount can run with all of the same system capabilities as a program that is installed onto a hard drive? Is there something magical about installing a program or is it just copying the necessary files to the right directories?
In Linux there's usually nothing magical about it, as long as you have all the libs needed to run the program, and as long as the program is told where to find them. There's no registry to be concerned about, usually no authorization keys, and no checks to make sure you're running the program from authorized media. People don't care about pirates when you're dealing with open source, so there's none of that extra security crap added, which usually just makes it harder on the licensed user anyway.
Generally any application can be built into a self-contained, portable package.
original here.