Kalternatives 4-beta review

The Mandrake/Debian alternatives system is designed to allow the system administrator to select an alternative when there are several

License: GPL (GNU General Public License) File size: 0K Developer: Juanjo Alvarez

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The Mandrake/Debian alternatives system is designed to allow the system administrator to select an alternative when there are several options that provide the same file or functionality.

For example, there are several different packages on Mandrake/Debian that provide the command "vi" (the standard POSIX text editor) and Mandrake/Debian (and other distributions using this same system as Mandrake Linux) allows you to have more than one option installed (for example, to satisfy the needs for different users on a multiuser system).

But, how does Mandrake/Debian knows which of the installed programs must be run when "vi" is entered on a shell? The answer is: using the alternatives system. This system keeps a database of provided alternatives for every option on /var/lib/dpkg/alternatives and a collection of links on /etc/alternatives that point to the real program.

So, if your default version of "vi" is "vim", the link /usr/bin/vi will point to /etc/alternatives/vi that points to /usr/bin/vim. But if in the future you would like to change /usr/bin/vi to point to the nvi executable you could:

1. Change the link on /etc/alternatives/vi by hand.
2. Use the Mandrake/Debian command update-alternatives --config vi
3. Use Kalternatives.