[fpc-pascal] Detecting what is the linux distro

[Henry Vermaak]

On 12 October 2010 17:06, ik <idokan at gmail.com> wrote:
> It's not just that. Lets say you have a UI for IPTables. In Redhat based, it
> will be located under /etc/sysconfig/iptables . On debian based, it should
> be under /etc/networking/post-config or something like that (don't have a
> debian based machine here), and so on...
>
> Please note that I do not talk about exited scripts such as Arno's scripts
> or shorewall, just plain IPTables client, and it's different on each distro.
>
> If you require to read settings of the system (that located at /etc/), no
> one guarantee you that all distro's will store then at the same place.

You can't rely on these things.  Distros will even change things from
version to version.  That is why you put things in configuration files
and let the maintainers/packagers supply the correct settings in the
config files for their distro.  This is how hundreds of apps do
things.

> That's the reason why so many software/driver vendors are so reluctant to
> release Linux support.

Nonsense.  Most vendors are lazy, some are scared of licensing, etc.
Most importantly they think they can get away with not supporting
linux because of the small market share.  For now.

Henry