Replacements for standard commands

GoboLinux has its own replacements for a few standard commands like su and make. The reasons for making a replacement ranges from adding necessary functionality (su) to making prettier output (make).

While having these “replaced programs” is not a problem in itself (in fact, most provide enhanced functionality which adds to the GoboLinux experience), it’s important to point out these differences here so that you can know what’s going on with these perhaps unexpected behaviors.

The replacements are provided by several different packages. All except install are handled by making an alias in the shell initialization scripts. This way, you can easily disable the alias and restore the original version of a program, if you so wish. They can be often found in their own subdirectory Resources/Wrappers inside the program directory.

• su - aliased to Su in the Shadow package to handle names other than root as super user
• sudo - aliased to Sudo in the Sudo package to handle names other than root as super user
• top - aliased to htop in the Htop package
• make - aliased to ColorMake in the Scripts package to produce colorful output
• info - aliased to Info in the Pinfo package
• man - aliased to Man in the Pinfo package
• install - install in CoreUtils has been renamed to real_install with install in the Scripts package as a wrapper (see section Sandboxing under GoboLinux for a detailed explanation)
• which - the Scripts package provides a “which” script which resolves symlinks in the path of the returned program, so that it indicates the /Programs path the binary refers to.

Aliases enabling “enhanced replacements” such as Htop and Pinfo are set in the Environment section of these packages. This way, if you want to stick to plain top and/or info, all you need to do is to remove (or just not install) these replacements.