Easy Fedora administration... why not?

Tim ignored_mailbox at yahoo.com.au
Wed Apr 1 16:09:12 UTC 2009


On Wed, 2009-04-01 at 08:21 -0400, Tom Horsley wrote:
> Then the linux developers, terrified that someone might have learned
> how to administer a system decide they need to rip everything apart
> and utterly change it - changes which are never reflected in the
> easy admin interface (things like network -> NetworkManager,
> xorg.conf -> weird /etc/fdi files for hal, etc).

We've seen this with Webmin and Linuxconf.  After a while, the things it
controls change, yet it doesn't keep step.  It could only control things
if you didn't hand modify files, as it required the config files to be
formatted in a very specific way (e.g. with indented spaces, and special
comments, and command options in specific orders).  That also precluded
letting any other application modify configuration files, for the same
reason.

The gnome-control-centre, was a somewhat better approach.  It was just a
collection of icons for control panels.  The icons would launch the
control panel application that already existed for the application, the
application's *own* control gadget, not a third-party thing.  Of course
that's only useful for configuring the local machine, simultaneously
remote controlling a fleet of machines needs a different approach.

Such idiot interfaces tend to omit something else - adequate
explanations of what you're fiddling with.  So they're not of much use
to the clueless, anyway.

-- 
[tim at localhost ~]$ uname -r
2.6.27.19-78.2.30.fc9.i686

Don't send private replies to my address, the mailbox is ignored.  I
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