Discussion of Fedora Server use-cases

[Miloslav Trmač]

On Mon, Oct 28, 2013 at 3:18 PM, Simo Sorce <simo at redhat.com> wrote:
> Sorry I am not sure what you mean here.
> If you mean the Server image will never have a graphical UI I don't
> think we are all on the same boat.
>
> Not that I want to install such UI by default, but not all people are
> comfortable managing headless servers, so the option almost certainly
> needs to be there.

<flame_proof_suit>
The UNIX CLI is, over time, less and less an acceptable interface.

It's good and efficient at what it has been originally designed for
(manipulating line-oriented text by experts - all those two- and
three-character commands and little languages).

It's not particularly great at interactive use when compared to an
efficient GUI (the command names and options inconsistent, many and
long; the configuration file format is even more inconsistent than the
command names and options; to use either of them one has to either
remember a lot of option names / config directives, or to constantly
read documentation).

It's not a particularly good programming environment either - no IDE,
no type checking / lint / code completion.

There are only two major interfaces worse than the UNIX CLI: A GUI
that was not designed to be efficient, and an application with a GUI
that doesn't have any programmable interface.
</flame_proof_suit>

I think we should, over time, move towards a "G"UI (whether local or
web is an implementation detail in this) for one-time use, and an
actual API used by an actual, current-era, programming language, for
automated use.  The CLI will obviously stay, both because many users
are comfortable with it, and because we can't replace it during this
decade.
     Mirek