> I do not agree. Redhat seems to be more friendly for inexperienced user > than debian, but in fact RH does many things in "standard" way. You dont > know exactly how system is configured, and thats (IMHO) why this is not > good system for ISP. Debian is more difficult to configure, but after > doing this you know exactly how it works and what services are installed This comment appears very often in Slashdot. Only if s/Debian/Slackware/ I think Debian always intended to serve experienced users while still beingeasy to use and configure. There is no reason why you can't have both, giventhat a good design is adopted.
something which may be overlooked in this drive to create an easy interface for configuration is that a person must know how a tool works before they can configure it. this is a chronic problem with nearly all the software I've ever used: either the manual is too simplistic, dealing only with step-by-step instructions (this is not characteristic of debian or linux or tools written for these platforms, of course), or it is too technical or badly organized or simply unavailable. I've noticed that a startling number of debian packages have man pages dealing only with command-line options or are completely undocumented, especially the kernel config files and library config files (/etc/networks, /etc/hosts, etc).
I realize that this is not a problem for admintool developers, but in my educated opinion, building a better information system, or better populating the current one, is more important than making fancy config file generators. building a centralized configuration database is a worthy goal, but in the end it's really only half of the problem.
debian seriously needs to attract some technical writers. ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com