11:05 p.m.
Hello, SUSE distributions have a system control panel that can configure many aspects of
the system. It is the best feature I saw in SUSE, it is very interesting, useful and
beneficial for all users.
* Why Fedora does not have such tool?
* How much money is need to develop such tool from scratch or port it from SUSE to
Fedora/RHEL?
If Fedora provides such tool, it can attract many users from Ubuntu, Debian and others to
Fedora.
1:02 a.m.
On Thu, 2017-04-13 at 04:05 +0000, Farhad Mohammadi Majd wrote:
Hello, SUSE distributions have a system control panel that can
configure many aspects of the system. It is the best feature I saw in SUSE, it is very
interesting, useful and beneficial for all users.
* Why Fedora does not have such tool?
Because we think it's fundamentally a wrong approach. Several years
ago, Fedora decided it really wasn't the right approach for
distributions to build unique layers of configuration tools, and we've
been systematically *removing* the tools we used to provide along those
lines (system-config-*) in favour of:
i) just getting things right so we don't need a giant pile of
configuration tools
ii) tools written at more appropriate layers, mainly desktop
environments
* How much money is need to develop such tool from scratch or port it
from SUSE to Fedora/RHEL?
It's not really a question of resources, but of not thinking this is
the correct approach.
--
Adam Williamson
Fedora QA Community Monkey
IRC: adamw | Twitter: AdamW_Fedora | XMPP: adamw AT happyassassin . net
http://www.happyassassin.net
1:31 a.m.
As someone who came to Fedora from openSUSE, yeah, Adam, YaST is definitely
a bad approach. It was great for things I did *once* when I set up a box,
but for the stuff I did regularly - install / uninstall packages, build
stuff from source, etc. - the command line tools beat the crap out of GUIs.
On Wed, Apr 12, 2017 at 11:03 PM Adam Williamson <adamwill(a)fedoraproject.org>
wrote:
On Thu, 2017-04-13 at 04:05 +0000, Farhad Mohammadi Majd wrote:
> Hello, SUSE distributions have a system control panel that can configure
many aspects of the system. It is the best feature I saw in SUSE, it is
very interesting, useful and beneficial for all users.
>
> * Why Fedora does not have such tool?
Because we think it's fundamentally a wrong approach. Several years
ago, Fedora decided it really wasn't the right approach for
distributions to build unique layers of configuration tools, and we've
been systematically *removing* the tools we used to provide along those
lines (system-config-*) in favour of:
i) just getting things right so we don't need a giant pile of
configuration tools
ii) tools written at more appropriate layers, mainly desktop
environments
> * How much money is need to develop such tool from scratch or port it
from SUSE to Fedora/RHEL?
It's not really a question of resources, but of not thinking this is
the correct approach.
--
Adam Williamson
Fedora QA Community Monkey
IRC: adamw | Twitter: AdamW_Fedora | XMPP: adamw AT happyassassin . net
http://www.happyassassin.net
_______________________________________________
devel mailing list -- devel(a)lists.fedoraproject.org
To unsubscribe send an email to devel-leave(a)lists.fedoraproject.org
--
How many people can stand on the shoulders of a giant before the giant
collapses?
2:04 a.m.
On Thu, 2017-04-13 at 04:05 +0000, Farhad Mohammadi Majd wrote:
Because we think it's fundamentally a wrong approach.
....
It's not really a question of resources, but of not thinking this is
the correct approach.
What is the correct approach?! Wasting lots of time on:
* reading bad-structured and complex man pages?
* search the internet through search engines and open tens of web pages and reading a
bunch of out-dated and non-functional information?
* struggle with too many different tools that most of them are unknown for users due to
lack of a central management tool like IBM AIX System Management Interface Tool (SMIT)?
2:17 a.m.
On Thu, Apr 13, 2017 at 07:04:57AM -0000, Farhad Mohammadi Majd wrote:
> On Thu, 2017-04-13 at 04:05 +0000, Farhad Mohammadi Majd wrote:
> Because we think it's fundamentally a wrong approach.
> ....
> It's not really a question of resources, but of not thinking this is
> the correct approach.
What is the correct approach?
You seem to have missed this in Adam's email so here it is:
i) just getting things right so we don't need a giant pile of
configuration tools
ii) tools written at more appropriate layers, mainly desktop
environments
Now if you think this is wrong, maybe you could give a few examples and bug
reports so that there is something tangible to discuss. Otherwise we're just
discussing around opinions and I doubt that it would lead to anything
productive.
All the best,
Pierre
2:45 a.m.
On Thu, Apr 13, 2017 at 07:04:57AM -0000, Farhad Mohammadi Majd
wrote:
You seem to have missed this in Adam's email
No, I don't missed anything.
i) just getting things right so we don't need a giant pile of
configuration tools
ii) tools written at more appropriate layers, mainly desktop
environments
"so we don't need" What is his mean about "WE" ?!
* professional and long time system administrators?
* Fedora developers?
* amateur users? special users who come from windows?
8:14 a.m.
Actually isn't Cockpit our 'YAST', I mean it is not a 1to1 thing, but
for a lot of things Cockpit provides the featureset a sysadmin would
want.
Christian
----- Original Message -----
> From: "Adam Williamson" <adamwill(a)fedoraproject.org>
> To: "Development discussions related to Fedora"
<devel(a)lists.fedoraproject.org>
> Sent: Thursday, April 13, 2017 2:02:57 AM
> Subject: Re: YAST for Fedora?
>
> On Thu, 2017-04-13 at 04:05 +0000, Farhad Mohammadi Majd wrote:
> > Hello, SUSE distributions have a system control panel that can configure
> > many aspects of the system. It is the best feature I saw in SUSE, it is
> > very interesting, useful and beneficial for all users.
> >
> > * Why Fedora does not have such tool?
>
> Because we think it's fundamentally a wrong approach. Several years
> ago, Fedora decided it really wasn't the right approach for
> distributions to build unique layers of configuration tools, and we've
> been systematically *removing* the tools we used to provide along those
> lines (system-config-*) in favour of:
>
> i) just getting things right so we don't need a giant pile of
> configuration tools
> ii) tools written at more appropriate layers, mainly desktop
> environments
>
> > * How much money is need to develop such tool from scratch or port it from
> > SUSE to Fedora/RHEL?
>
> It's not really a question of resources, but of not thinking this is
> the correct approach.
> --
> Adam Williamson
> Fedora QA Community Monkey
> IRC: adamw | Twitter: AdamW_Fedora | XMPP: adamw AT happyassassin . net
> http://www.happyassassin.net
> _______________________________________________
> devel mailing list -- devel(a)lists.fedoraproject.org
> To unsubscribe send an email to devel-leave(a)lists.fedoraproject.org
>
9:22 a.m.
On Thu, 2017-04-13 at 04:05 +0000, Farhad Mohammadi Majd wrote:
Hello, SUSE distributions have a system control panel that can
configure many aspects of the system. It is the best feature I saw in SUSE, it is very
interesting, useful and beneficial for all users.
* Why Fedora does not have such tool?
* How much money is need to develop such tool from scratch or port it from SUSE to
Fedora/RHEL?
If Fedora provides such tool, it can attract many users from Ubuntu, Debian and others to
Fedora.
You should probably look at cockpit these days.
Simo.
--
Simo Sorce
Sr. Principal Software Engineer
Red Hat, Inc
9:36 a.m.
You either love YaST or you don't. The advantage is it's one stop
shopping. But like any shopping mall, it can be confusing to find what
you're looking for, and that lasts until you've successfully left the
parking lot.
It has a ton of options. Discoverability is a problem until you're
fairly familiar with the tool. Understanding what it's done, whether
it's done it, is a problem. I think it'd take a lot of work to make
sure it's not stepping on all the other ways we already have to set
things in Fedora. There'd be a lot of overlap. And that itself would
just add confusion.
GNOME Shell's search is pretty cool. My recommendation is make that
better if people are spending too much time looking for things. Type
ssh into search and the first option is the Sharing panel where Remote
Login is found. Neat! That's a lot better than digging around in a
monolithic program.
Two substantial parts to YaST that just aren't applicable to Fedora:
package updates and software installation, Fedora has GNOME Software
for this; and managing system snapshots and rollbacks, Fedora is
working on rpm-ostree/atomic workstation and flatpaks for this. So
once YaST gets pruned down, I'm not really sure what's left, but I'd
sooner look for enhancement elsewhere than include YaST in Fedora.
Chris Murphy
9:41 a.m.
On Thu, Apr 13, 2017 at 8:22 AM, Simo Sorce <simo(a)redhat.com> wrote:
On Thu, 2017-04-13 at 04:05 +0000, Farhad Mohammadi Majd wrote:
> Hello, SUSE distributions have a system control panel that can configure many aspects
of the system. It is the best feature I saw in SUSE, it is very interesting, useful and
beneficial for all users.
>
> * Why Fedora does not have such tool?
>
> * How much money is need to develop such tool from scratch or port it from SUSE to
Fedora/RHEL?
>
> If Fedora provides such tool, it can attract many users from Ubuntu, Debian and
others to Fedora.
You should probably look at cockpit these days.
Cockpit is badass.
--
Chris Murphy
11:38 a.m.
On Thu, 2017-04-13 at 07:45 +0000, Farhad Mohammadi Majd wrote:
> On Thu, Apr 13, 2017 at 07:04:57AM -0000, Farhad Mohammadi Majd
wrote:
>
> You seem to have missed this in Adam's email
No, I don't missed anything.
> i) just getting things right so we don't need a giant pile of
> configuration tools
> ii) tools written at more appropriate layers, mainly desktop
> environments
"so we don't need" What is his mean about "WE" ?!
* professional and long time system administrators?
* Fedora developers?
* amateur users? special users who come from windows?
The specific example I was thinking about there was hardware
configuration.
Once Upon A Time, almost every distro had a big shiny configuration
tool you could use to configure X - you'd tell it what graphics card
you had, and what resolution and refresh rate you wanted, and it had
all sorts of whizzy buttons for doing other things. We had similar
tools for configuring sound cards.
Now we don't have that, because we decided that instead of spending all
this time maintaining that stuff, we should just make X figure out your
hardware configuration and set itself up properly. So now it auto-
detects what card you have and loads the right driver, and auto-detects
the native resolution and refresh rate of your monitor so you don't
have to tell a configuration tool what they are. So we don't have
system-config-display any more, because it's not necessary.
The desktop environments each have their own tool for using non-default
resolutions and arranging multi-head displays and stuff, which means
they only have to get written once per desktop (every distro can use
the same ones).
--
Adam Williamson
Fedora QA Community Monkey
IRC: adamw | Twitter: AdamW_Fedora | XMPP: adamw AT happyassassin . net
http://www.happyassassin.net
11:40 a.m.
On Thu, 2017-04-13 at 09:14 -0400, Christian Schaller wrote:
Actually isn't Cockpit our 'YAST', I mean it is not a
1to1 thing, but
for a lot of things Cockpit provides the featureset a sysadmin would
want.
Yeah, Cockpit is an interesting one. But I see it as being a sort of
webapp 'desktop environment' for sysadmins, rather than being a set of
Fedora configuration tools. Notably Cockpit isn't developed by
*Fedora*, and even for Red Hat it's not really "the Red Hat
configuration tools", it's an upstream, the way we conceive of FreeIPA
or GNOME or the kernel or anything else we ultimately pull into our
distributions. It might be a thing we pull into our distributions,
which is developed primarily by Red Hatters, but it's not a part of the
*distribution development process*, and indeed Cockpit is being shipped
by other distros now.
--
Adam Williamson
Fedora QA Community Monkey
IRC: adamw | Twitter: AdamW_Fedora | XMPP: adamw AT happyassassin . net
http://www.happyassassin.net
12:34 p.m.
On Thu, Apr 13, 2017 at 11:40 AM, Adam Williamson
<adamwill(a)fedoraproject.org> wrote:
On Thu, 2017-04-13 at 09:14 -0400, Christian Schaller wrote:
> Actually isn't Cockpit our 'YAST', I mean it is not a 1to1 thing, but
> for a lot of things Cockpit provides the featureset a sysadmin would
> want.
We could always bring back linuxconf...
2:22 p.m.
Fedora now have cockpit, it is a nice shell for some administrative tasks
in the system
9:23 p.m.
On Thu, Apr 13, 2017 at 3:17 AM, Pierre-Yves Chibon <pingou(a)pingoured.fr> wrote:
On Thu, Apr 13, 2017 at 07:04:57AM -0000, Farhad Mohammadi Majd
wrote:
> > On Thu, 2017-04-13 at 04:05 +0000, Farhad Mohammadi Majd wrote:
> > Because we think it's fundamentally a wrong approach.
> > ....
> > It's not really a question of resources, but of not thinking this is
> > the correct approach.
>
> What is the correct approach?
You seem to have missed this in Adam's email so here it is:
i) just getting things right so we don't need a giant pile of
configuration tools
ii) tools written at more appropriate layers, mainly desktop
environments
This is how you wind up with systemd. One overarching tool with a
forced consistent toolset will include debris that is completely
unnecessary for some environments and merely brings in libraries or
compnents they don't need, and be unable to do the more specific,
tuneable tasks for particular configuration tools. It was tried for
Fedora years ago, and discarded with a passion.
Now if you think this is wrong, maybe you could give a few examples
and bug
reports so that there is something tangible to discuss. Otherwise we're just
discussing around opinions and I doubt that it would lead to anything
productive.
YaST DNS management, limited, painful, and difficult to tune for valid
site specific configuration such as using the same .zone file for
multiple domains.
YaST package management, which attempts to incorporate management of
non-RPM proprietary tools alongside RPM package management, mishandles
the proprietary tools, and doesn't report conflicts among them though
it's alleging to manage both.
YaST mishandling of timezone confurations. (They may have fixed that one.)
YaST printer configuration. Mind you, that one's always been painful.
YaST reminded me, very forcefully, of Eric Raymond's essay on "The
Luxury of Ignorance". Unfortunately, in its attempts to make things,
it got many things *wrong*, and had little option to get them right.
Amusingly, this is the third time I've mentioned that essay this week
to people very excited about having a gui, and not admitting the
limitations of their particular approach. YaST, when I last used it,
violated every one of Eric's original 6 rules of thumb, and the 4
rules of thumb that I suggested to him and that he added as a
postscript.
It may have gotten better, but it was *horrible* the last time I touched it.
> All the best,
> Pierre
> _______________________________________________
> devel mailing list -- devel(a)lists.fedoraproject.org
> To unsubscribe send an email to devel-leave(a)lists.fedoraproject.org
10:18 p.m.
On Thu, 2017-04-13 at 22:23 -0400, Nico Kadel-Garcia wrote:
On Thu, Apr 13, 2017 at 3:17 AM, Pierre-Yves Chibon
<pingou(a)pingoured.fr> wrote:
> On Thu, Apr 13, 2017 at 07:04:57AM -0000, Farhad Mohammadi Majd wrote:
> > > On Thu, 2017-04-13 at 04:05 +0000, Farhad Mohammadi Majd wrote:
> > > Because we think it's fundamentally a wrong approach.
> > > ....
> > > It's not really a question of resources, but of not thinking this is
> > > the correct approach.
> >
> > What is the correct approach?
>
> You seem to have missed this in Adam's email so here it is:
>
> i) just getting things right so we don't need a giant pile of
> configuration tools
> ii) tools written at more appropriate layers, mainly desktop
> environments
This is how you wind up with systemd.
Um. What? systemd has nothing to do with this, and...
One overarching tool
...I didn't say anything about 'one overarching tool'.
It was tried for
Fedora years ago, and discarded with a passion.
What 'was tried for Fedora'? What are you referring to?
> Now if you think this is wrong, maybe you could give a few
examples and bug
> reports so that there is something tangible to discuss. Otherwise we're just
> discussing around opinions and I doubt that it would lead to anything
> productive.
YaST DNS management, limited, painful, and difficult to tune for valid
site specific configuration such as using the same .zone file for
multiple domains.
YaST package management, which attempts to incorporate management of
non-RPM proprietary tools alongside RPM package management, mishandles
the proprietary tools, and doesn't report conflicts among them though
it's alleging to manage both.
YaST mishandling of timezone confurations. (They may have fixed that one.)
YaST printer configuration. Mind you, that one's always been painful.
Um. You realize I was saying that we *don't* have anything like YAST
and we explicitly chose not to, right? You seem to be confused about
who's arguing what.
--
Adam Williamson
Fedora QA Community Monkey
IRC: adamw | Twitter: AdamW_Fedora | XMPP: adamw AT happyassassin . net
http://www.happyassassin.net
7:19 a.m.
On Thu, Apr 13, 2017 at 11:18 PM, Adam Williamson
<adamwill(a)fedoraproject.org> wrote:
On Thu, 2017-04-13 at 22:23 -0400, Nico Kadel-Garcia wrote:
> On Thu, Apr 13, 2017 at 3:17 AM, Pierre-Yves Chibon <pingou(a)pingoured.fr>
wrote:
> > On Thu, Apr 13, 2017 at 07:04:57AM -0000, Farhad Mohammadi Majd wrote:
> > > > On Thu, 2017-04-13 at 04:05 +0000, Farhad Mohammadi Majd wrote:
> > > > Because we think it's fundamentally a wrong approach.
> > > > ....
> > > > It's not really a question of resources, but of not thinking this
is
> > > > the correct approach.
> > >
> > > What is the correct approach?
> >
> > You seem to have missed this in Adam's email so here it is:
> >
> > i) just getting things right so we don't need a giant pile of
> > configuration tools
> > ii) tools written at more appropriate layers, mainly desktop
> > environments
>
> This is how you wind up with systemd.
Um. What? systemd has nothing to do with this, and...
Ignoring this approach is how you wind up with systemd. I'm sorry it
was unclear that I was agreeing with *you. It's the idea that one tool
should provide control of all subsystems and manage all subcomponents
throughout the operating system. We're seeing complications of it
where that new tool takes on managing new components with new
approaches, and becomes very difficult to prevent from managing or
making mistakes with things other developers, more involved with those
other components, didn't ask for.
> One overarching tool
...I didn't say anything about 'one overarching tool'.
> It was tried for
> Fedora years ago, and discarded with a passion.
What 'was tried for Fedora'? What are you referring to?
Linuxconf, which was much like YaST. It was in some of Red Hat's 8 and
a few other pre-RHEL releases, it didn't work very well, and was
maintained for some time in a number of third-party Fedora
repositories. From a casual archive search, it doesn't seem to have
ever made it into the actual Fedora releases.
> > Now if you think this is wrong, maybe you could give a few
examples and bug
> > reports so that there is something tangible to discuss. Otherwise we're
just
> > discussing around opinions and I doubt that it would lead to anything
> > productive.
>
> YaST DNS management, limited, painful, and difficult to tune for valid
> site specific configuration such as using the same .zone file for
> multiple domains.
> YaST package management, which attempts to incorporate management of
> non-RPM proprietary tools alongside RPM package management, mishandles
> the proprietary tools, and doesn't report conflicts among them though
> it's alleging to manage both.
> YaST mishandling of timezone confurations. (They may have fixed that one.)
> YaST printer configuration. Mind you, that one's always been painful.
Um. You realize I was saying that we *don't* have anything like YAST
and we explicitly chose not to, right? You seem to be confused about
who's arguing what.
Sorry for confusion. I lost track with the indents on that one. I'm
pretty passionate that Fedora is using a better approach. YaST was
*not* my friend when I had to deal with it, nor was the old linuxconf
tool. Do not get me *going* on what its X configuration tools did with
proprietary NVidia drivers, trying to intermingle them with RPM based
X updates and ignoring the chaos.
2:17 a.m.
I believe that everyone comes from MS Windows to Linux will need to YAST, currently it
provides many modules that makes system management very easy:
* service management, what services are running, what are stopped, and user can change
their status.
* systemd control
* hardware configuration and provide technical info about them
* many more modules for doing essential works
until Fedora does not provide YAST, it can not claim that is a good alternative for
desktop users of MS Windows.
10:08 a.m.
On Fri, Apr 14, 2017 at 7:19 AM, Nico Kadel-Garcia <nkadel(a)gmail.com> wrote:
On Thu, Apr 13, 2017 at 11:18 PM, Adam Williamson
>> It was tried for
>> Fedora years ago, and discarded with a passion.
>
> What 'was tried for Fedora'? What are you referring to?
Linuxconf, which was much like YaST. It was in some of Red Hat's 8 and
a few other pre-RHEL releases, it didn't work very well, and was
maintained for some time in a number of third-party Fedora
repositories. From a casual archive search, it doesn't seem to have
ever made it into the actual Fedora releases.
Linuxconf was actually a part of Red Hat Linux for a while, but
removed in RHL 7.1 I believe (over 15 years ago), long before Fedora.
I only brought it up as a joke. It was removed because it was the
wrong approach.
Systems management is an interesting topic, and very difficult to get
right. I think cockpit is a great tool, but it is not a full system
configuration tool, and shouldn't be. While it has been years since I
was in the system engineering/sysadmin world, I very much remember
tools like smit/smitty. Not because they were easy to use, but
because they bred an entire group of "sysadmins" who knew these admin
tools, but had no idea what those tools were actually doing. They
didn't understand the systems at all. I really like the approach of
a) self configuring services where possible, b) service specific tools
where required, and c) good old fashioned config files available for
fine tuning everything. Ideally, a large percentage of users will
never have to configure their services. For those that do, service
specific tools can always make better decisions than something unified
tracking a ton of services and upstreams. Config files might require
reading a man page, or docs, but they are manageable, they can be
revision controlled in git, and provisioned to a number of machines at
once very easily.
11:40 a.m.
On 04/18/2017 12:17 AM, Farhad Mohammadi Majd wrote:
I believe that everyone comes from MS Windows to Linux will need to
YAST, currently it provides many modules that makes system management very easy:
* service management, what services are running, what are stopped, and user can change
their status.
* systemd control
* hardware configuration and provide technical info about them
* many more modules for doing essential works
until Fedora does not provide YAST, it can not claim that is a good alternative for
desktop users of MS Windows.
An alternative does not mean it has to be a clone. The beauty about
linux is that it tends to work without you needing to change any
configs. I honestly can't remember the last time I've needed to edit
services or systemd. All my devices work out-of-the box, except the
wireless card in my laptop that wasn't originally supported by the
kernel and so I had to grab a newer one from rawhide and newer firmware
from upstream.
Also, if you're going to configure services, it's a good bet you'll want
to edit the config files as well.
Sure, a configuration tool might be great for some simple things, like
sharing your internet connection at home, but
a) as stated before, the purpose-specific tools are much better at this
than one-size-fits-all ones
b) there's simply less need to run services yourself nowadays, because
you can get them cheap or free of charge from the cloud.
--
Susi Lehtola
Fedora Project Contributor
jussilehtola(a)fedoraproject.org
2558
days inactive
2563
days old
20 comments
12 participants
participants (12)
-
Adam Williamson -
Chris Murphy -
Christian Schaller -
Clement Verna -
Farhad Mohammadi Majd -
Justin Forbes -
M. Edward (Ed) Borasky -
Nico Kadel-Garcia -
Pierre-Yves Chibon -
Simo Sorce -
Susi Lehtola -
William Moreno