Hi,
many thanks for the comments I've received on my question,
wether linuxconf or webmin is "better" (does mean: fits
better in a Debian environment and has more advantages in
general). I was not sure wether the question alone would
result in a flame war, but due to the lack of linuxconf
fans it did not happen :-)
Thanks to Andreas Fuchs, Jamie Cameron, Jules Bean, Martin
Hoeller, who sent me even a patch that should make webmin
work better with the lynx browser, Ryan W. Maple and Seth
Cohn for their input.
One very important question is how the tools allow an
administrator to set certain configuration values of many
machines at once. As far as I understand, neither tool do
address this problem. Maybe there is some integration
into network management systems, I'm not aware of?
Again, here's the pro-and-cons listing for the tools:
Linuxconf Webmin
General
not Linux-only yes (new) yes (for a long time)
3rd party modules some more
included in Debian yes soon
leaves comments sometimes yes
minimal size ? ?
size w/ all modules ? ?
security ? ?
(is webmin really more secure than linuxconf, if yes, why?)
User interface
web yes yes
ASCII yes yes (w3m; lynx, if patched)
X yes yes (X browser)
command line yes no
WAP no no
API
API for modules yes yes
well documented no yes
easily extendable no yes
Modules
ISDN yes yes
MySQL no yes
PPP dialin yes yes
PPP dialout yes yes
PPPoE yes no
PostgreSQL no no
RAID no yes
RARP yes no
access control yes yes
apache yes yes
apt no no
crond no yes
dhcpd yes yes
dnsconf yes yes
dpkg no yes
drdb yes no
exim no no
fetchmail yes no
firewall yes yes
imap no yes
inetd yes yes
inittab yes yes
ircd yes no
isapnp yes no
kannel no yes
kernel parameters yes no
ldap yes yes
lilo yes yes
lpd yes yes
majordomo no yes
mgetty yes no
modem yes no
motd yes no
mrtg yes no
Debian net config yes yes?
postfix no yes
proftpd yes no
qmail no yes
samba yes yes
sendmail yes yes
smail no no
squid yes yes
sshd yes no
syslogd no yes
system status yes no
user management yes yes
uucp no no
wuftpd yes yes
Bye,
--
W. Borgert <debacle@debian.org>