On Sun, 5 May 2002 11:52:43 -0500 "Ronald W. Heiby" <heiby_rh@falkor.chi.il.us> wrote: > -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- > Hash: SHA1 > > Sunday, May 5, 2002, 7:39:51 AM, Jean wrote: > > But now you find that the macho Unixers will win that their little > > brains are unable to decypzer the scripts who configure the network > > in RedHat or Mandrake and that is why they want a bare bones distro. > > I used UNIX and administered UNIX systems for many years. I hope you > will not interpret this message as a win (whine?). > > I think that it is really cool, spiffy, neato that RH 7.2 installs and > pretty much just works. For the last three installs of 7.2 I did, I > *needed* to make only a couple of little tweaks to get basic > functionality going. This is a good thing. > > However, recent Windows incarnations do the same thing, as do > Macintosh. What's the difference? > > Well, as I see it, the difference is that with UNIX / Linux, I have > the power and ability to go in and manipulate the configuration to fix > things when it doesn't "just work". > > I remember trying to install a modem on my brother-in-law's Mac. I > spent a couple of hours on it and gave up. Nowhere was it documented > where the file was that held the AT command to initialize or dial the > modem. Nowhere was it documented how to go in and edit the file if you > were able to find it. I couldn't even find a "text editor", just a > "word processor". > > Windows is somewhat better on that score, but still tries to be overly > "friendly" and hide such stuff from the user. > > I would hate to see the packaged distros go so far towards the Windows > and Mac camps that the only way to configure things was through their > "friendly" configuration program. I *really* want to see the flat > files documented, even it it is back in an Appendix or in a file > somewhere (whose location is clearly documented). That way, when I > want to do something that those implementing the configuration program > didn't think of (and I *will*), I have the information I need to do > what needs to be done. > In what closed formats and opaqueness are related to user friendliness? There are HUGE books about the register base and when you have to modify it (not so unfrequent) it is far more difficult than Unix text formats. Having user friendly tools does not necessarily imply config files are not human readable as in Unix, or that the documentation must necessarily be hidden to you. But we need to get rid of the macho culture. Take as an example the second edition of Olaf's Kirch "Network administration for Linux" (O'Reilly). Let's look at the PPP chapter, this one is important for induividual users and individual users need a simple and direct approach since they cannot "spread the learning load", while in corporations a system administrator reading books is only one thousandth of the company's workforce who is being lost. The fact is that when I read the PPP chapter I see detailed descriptions of the connecting dialogs between modem and host but for 99.9% of people this is completely useless unless you are a distribution author. For most people filling the fields in the distro tool would do the job and if you have non standard AT sequences you can enter them through the tool. But those tools are not described in Kirsch's book, so not only the user does not find what he will really need but persons casually leafing through the book will believe Linux is far harder than what really is. This plays in ths hands of MS. It would have been far better to give an example of how this is done in one of the leading distros, and, since the book is supposed to be a refernece book, have a "behind the curtains" section. Another reason for tools is coherency. Unfortunately Unix has had a somewhat anarchic history so for instance if for some reason you have to change your hostname you will have to change it in the mail server config files, in the news server and so on. In an ideal world those tools would look at the same place but until they are rewritten manual config will be prone to inconsistency. Better have a mix of tools plus balck magic in config files. > I'm all for letting things just work, but I also want the > documentation that allows me to make unanticipated things work > (without having to read the source). > Not a contradiction. JFM _______________________________________________ Redhat-devel-list mailing list Redhat-devel-list@redhat.com https://listman.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/redhat-devel-list
