LinuxSA Mailing list archives

  From: Damien Uern <carrigan_2606@optusnet.com.au>
  To  : Richard Russell <richard@yellowgoanna.com>
        <linuxsa@linuxsa.org.au>
  Date: Wed, 2 Jul 2003 00:54:34 +0930

Re: (Clarification) Re: Some Proposals for a Linux of The Future (tm) :)

On Tue, 1 Jul 2003 02:10 am, Richard Russell wrote:
> <snip>
>
> > I don't believe having a consistent and easy to understand
> > configuration
> > layout is "training wheels" or going to create "inferior" System
>
> It wouldn't be if it was implemented everywhere all at once. However, in
> the meantime, we still have thousands of machines with traditional config
> layouts, and people who move from the new and improved system to the old
> system will be lost. It's not an insult to a newly designed system, it's
> just a fact of life (eg if you learn in an automatic car, you are not going
> to be able to drive a manual, and so whether or not automatics are "better"
> doesn't matter -- if you want to drive my car, you are going to need to
> know how to drive a manual). Likewise, if you are going to want to
> administer any other *nix box, you are going to need to know how to drive
> the old /etc system (and I, in my arrogance, would sat that that is
> essential for calling yourself a systems administrator :) )...

But if you've learnt a manual transmission, Automatics are basic :) 

But true, since the new system makes so much sense, going back to an old 
system might be difficult :) That's not a bug, that's a feature! :)

I see it as:

If old system learnt first, new system picked up easily.
If new system learnt first, old system is scary and illogical (but not so 
different that it's impossible to learn, just like a C programmer can learn 
COBOL :)

>
> > Administrators. I think what it could do is make an
> > unecessarily complex and
> > illogical system easier to learn and remember. It's about
> > making a system
> > more accessible, not "dumbing it down" or making it any less powerful.
>
> "dumbing it down" wasn't great choice of words on my part. It's quite
> possible to not dumb it down. I guess every GUI tool I've ever seen does
> dumb things down, and eventually, you need to get into the config files.

I want to make it easier to do both :)

I am trying to please everybody in a way. Keeping the configuration easy to 
edit by hand is essential. Why learn 50 different config file syntaxes? Being 
able to easily code a GUI for the system is a bonus.

>
> rr
>
> --
> Richard Russell
> Yellow Goanna P/L
> m: +61 412 827 805
> e: richard@yellowgoanna.com
> w: http://www.yellowgoanna.com

Cheers,

Damien


-- 
LinuxSA WWW: http://www.linuxsa.org.au/ IRC: #linuxsa on irc.freenode.net
To unsubscribe from the LinuxSA list:
  mail linuxsa-request@linuxsa.org.au with "unsubscribe" as the subject