Linux does not operate this way. File extensions are more like a remeinder of the file type. The beginning of most file formats has information about the file type. Linux uses this instead of file extensions to discover the file type. So if you change the extension of a rpm package, linux will still recognize it as a rpm package.

Particulary, executable files do not have a associated extension, the fact that this file can be executed is marked in the files permissions. So the permission may say: X, Y and Z can executed this file, but the other users can read it, but not execute it.

When you compile a program, the resulting file is marked as being executable on the file permissions.

Also executable often have no extension at all.

umm ...
cant we make a Standard in linux that resolves this thing ?

I don't understabd what you mean. You want to make it a linux standard that everything that is executable ends in an extension like .exe? I don't personally see the purpose of that. Mainly anything executable resides in /usr/bin or /usr/sbin. Some distros place things other places and if you compile from source you can place it anywhere you want but executable files are usually placed in the directories above.

I think he was talking about my other post where I explained why sometimes we need different rpms for distros like mandrake and fedora.

Sure, but unfortunatly I am not the owner of any major distro (or any at all), so there is little I can do

There are moves in this direction. Mandrake, SuSe, Fedora and Debian all agreed on the Linux Standard Base, witch I like very much. I try to make all my programs LSB compatible. You can get more information googling that / searching the wikipedia.

Does anyone know if Slackware is LSB compatible?

How to explain ? Most of the linux distros are development projects even if they fancy themselves as usable products (only a few really are usable products).

There is still no distro that is all round good, up-to-date and bug free, that comes with the technology for third party to integrate without being part of the distro maintainers and is stable enough in time (like years) to create some kind of snow ball effect. And even if it's happening, it's probably going to be visible outside of the linux world first on sites like amazon, google and other huge portal that can collect OS statistics, and so far, it doesn't seem big enough to make the news.

So distros keep popping up that address some of the things that are wrong with the existing distros and bring their lot of problems as well. So you have different kernels, different sound architectures, different windowing environment, different hardware management, different package management etc.... But they all try to capture a certain vision of Linux as an OS.

The way I see it is that the linux phenomenon is a staggering development project out of which a platform may or may not emerge and distros are effort to crystalise the effort and see if it's good. Most are not, some are but none are good enough for the community to shift efforts towards it.

Also, Linux distros are a rare and cheap opportunity for developpers to get recognition and following (not saying it's easy, oh no) so it's not going to go away overnight.

thanks for the time fellos ... the explanations/reasons u guyz gave are awesome ...

i guess its time i get back to the linux world but being a software engineer i wanna know how can i contribute in the linux community and wheres the best place to find whats going on in the linux world ?