a tool for system administration
Hello,
IMHO the most important features that Unix and Unix-like systems lack
nowadays are: a standard and powerfull GUI & IDE (a-la NextStep) and a
standard and useful graphical administration tool. While there are some
movements to fill the first issue totally or partially (KDE, GNOME,
AfterStep etc.) there is not one to fill the second yet, though individual
initiatives are available, from vendors' particular SMIT, SAM, ADMINTOOL
etc. to more novice user oriented tools by Red Hat, SuSe, TurboLinux etc.
There is no yet a serious initiative from the Free Software community to
fill this gap. It is probably because of both the dificculty to manage all
the O.S. subsystems with its complex interrelation and the "command line"
culture of the Unix world. As for the second I think that though the
command line is an invaluable tool to get the full control of the system, a
general administrative tool for doing most of the administrative tasks fast
and easily is nowadays a necessity, specially if we want to make Linux et
al competitive in today's GUI world. This is not a concession to the novice
user. As a sys admin I do most of the administrative tasks on AIX with
SMIT. As for the first and more difficult question (how to manage a great
number of subsystems with complex dependencies between them) I think that
the best approach is to take advantage of the package oriented and
mantained way of Debian at al. Since every mantainer is an expert in the
installation, setup and use of the package that he maintains, he could
build a full featured setup & config program for the package. With a
standard specification for this programs, to provide a unified way of work
and cooperation between them, and a specification for an adequated user
front end to them, we could get a useful tool. I think this could be and
interesting and useful project for the Free Software and Debian community.
just an idea
Best Regards
Francisco Gaztelua
System Administrator
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