Re: and yet another zdnet "article" re: Lnx

[Adam Williams <awilliam@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

>>>I could be wrong on this but I really get the impression
>>>he hasn't used Linux any / much at all. The wording in
>>>the article suggest it.
>>Which is the problem with 98% of Linux articles at the major IT
>>publications these days.  Most of them are complaining that Linux
>>"should have this" and "should have that" when it, in fact, DOES!
>As requested I will attempt to move this to os-discuss.  I want to say this
>without slamming the talented MS admins out there.  So here is my attempt.  
>Most articles I see that say Linux needs to do this but it does not often times
>is about a subject that it does do.  The writers of the article describe that
>Linux is more difficult to administer than with the M$ gui interfaces.  (i.e.
>therefore it is not possible is the conclusion)  I think these writers want
>Linux to be just as simple to administer as the MS counterpart.  Take the MSSQL
>admin interface as an example, I was impressed when I first used MS SQL admin
>interface.  Now I'm glad I am not a slave to it.

This is indicative of poor investigation on part of the reviewers.  When
was the last time you say a schtick about a GUI DB admin tool talk about
how they deliberately trashed a table/index and used the GUI took
quick-and-easy point-and-click there way back to validity?  Product
reviews have gotten to a point where they are barely worth reading.

>Now to the good part.  With any software program: as the number and complexity
>of features increases, so does the difficulty to administer/use.  Hey, it takes

Not neccesarily true.  98.44% of people can get the sendmail
functionality they want by spending 15 seconds in Linuxconf.  Are you
saying sendmail is simple? :)

>longer to learn more features.  In general linux server side programs have a
>great deal of features.  This is usually because many people have added more
>features to the software that someone else started, then it snowballs.  Many
>times people spend hours looking for that one thing they don't understand that
>makes some package behave in an undesired way.  My first one was the encryption
>line in smb.conf.

True,  but only of people using advanced features.  I hold the opinion
that regardless of product most such people will meet with equal grief.
Intelligent (or better yet, adaptive) defaults are the best solution to
this problem.
 
>To me the choice is clear.  Be forced to learn more about the software you use
>or administer, feel good when it works and let it work for a long time, have a
>greater number of choices with how to change it if more is needed.  OR: Get
>something functioning quickly with little understanding of it, reboot, live
>without much flexibility, reboot again.  When asked why the service goes down
>shrug your shoulders and look stupid.  Reboot.  Tell everyone it works.  Wait,
>try to figure out what happened. ... ...

Your missing one other point: life-span.  How long does M$ hold to any
one technology.  Visual Basic anyone?  Version 4, 5, or 6? Oh, don't use
that, use: C#, .NET, and Commerce server.  I certainly don't want to
spend a significant portion of my time re-tooling all my projects.

>Which brings me to the projects making an effort to gui-fy Linux.  I'm all for
>it.  However, they really ought to tell you what text/configuration files it is

How about looking in /proc?  Or running strace, fuser, or lsof?

>editing when they do it.  A big difference to me between Linux and MS is that
>windows is a mystery, Linux is an open book.  I'd like the new people trying to
>use Linux see the book through gui.  Lets say I'm in Linuxconf and I just
>changed something in sendmail.  I would really like it if it told me what file
>it changed what the original file was renamed to and give me the option to see a
>result of a diff command between the two.  They also could have more
>explanations.  Assume you don't understand something, url to an explanation on
>the web somewhere.  I know what your thinking, Join the linuxconf team then.  OK
>I'm a hypocrite.

But Linuxconf does exactly this:  Just pick View Changes.

> Everything is clear if known.
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Ximian GNOME, Evolution, LTSP, and RedHat Linux + LVM & XFS
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