Re: [tlug] CLI admin how-to ideas?

[simon colston <simon@example.com>]

On Mon, 8 Apr 2002 21:57:23 +0900
Christopher SEKIYA <wileyc@example.com> wrote:

> On Mon, Apr 08, 2002 at 05:24:09AM -0700, Marlo Rocci wrote:
> 
> > Instead there answer appears to be "there are, but you're an idiot for
> > being curious about them".
> 
> More along the lines of "you know that mixing bleach with ammonia is a really
> bad idea, yeah?".

I think it's plainly obvious that some users don't want to have to become sysadmins in order to use (what should be) fairly straightforward functionality if implemented in a more user-friendly way.  OK, maybe you wont be able to do as much through a user-friendly interface, but you can certainly do a lot.  Elsewhere Stephen Turnbull described writing such an interface as a "business opportunity" and there are several projects trying to cater for this need.

Whether you think it's a good thing or bad I find it difficult to imagine a future for Linux without more _and better_ user-friendly interfaces to sysadmin functions.  The big challenge in the past (I don't know, I wasn't around) seems to have be installation and, from what I have read, most distributions seem to have made this an awful lot easier.  The next step will probably be -  "now the thing's installed let's make it easier to configure and maintain".  Undoubtedly there will be a painful period where these tools break more than they fix but, with open discussion and feedback, they will become as good as other parts of the system.

I was interested in how well programs such as webmin, linuxconf, ximian setup tools, etc. were doing, whether parts of them were reliable enough to use, etc. and it seems like a few other people on the list were interested too.  Of course, I wouldn't be caught dead using them... :-)

-- 
simon colston
simon@example.com