Re: Who is a Debian user?
On Sat, 25 Aug 2001, Claes Andersson wrote:
> Everyone who uses Debian is a Debian user, of course. But what does a Debian
[...]
> them to try this and try that. Often I ask them to run ipconfig (ifconfig in
> Linux) or tracert (traceroute in Linux). With the information they give me I
> can usually help them. Neither of us are superusers. Still, I see a need for
> both me and the users that call me to occasionally to run these commands. To
> me this PROVES that diagnostic network commands are useful for even the most
> common users. And in this case, I am sorry to say, I am glad they use NT.
So where's the problem. If they don't use Debian, they are definitely no
Debian users. But there are actual Debian users who expect traceroute to
be in /usr/sbin, should their interests be disregarded in favor of
people not even using Debian? If you want something like traceroute in
an ordinary users default path without manual changes you can simply
install the iputils-tracepath package instead of the traceroute package
(in Debian 2.2 tracepath is even in netbase).
> makes my life easier. I can help them faster and go back to coding faster.
> But it also makes me sad, because why should such a thing be easier in
> Windows than in Debian? It is so easy to change. The attitude against users
> is the only difference.
I accord with you. It always annoyed me that they don't give a d*** about
their users at Micro$oft. But I don't think Debian should adopt this.
> I have to come to ask myself: who is Debian for? Is there a vision that
> Debian someday will be used by more or less anyone? Or should it only run
> webservers and occassionally administrator desktops?
>
> Will Debian continue to maintain barriers between superuser territory and
> "the rest", even when it just comes to looking? I often get this feeling
> when I browse the mailing list archives that there is this elite-thinking
> that if you do not know the root password you should simply stay away from
> exploring superuser territory. Do not dare to explore the network
Hiding away system utilities has nothing to do with elite thinking, but
with protecting users from damaging their systems. May not be the case
with traceroute but there are other reasons, and, as there is no real
problem (s.a.) your blaming Debian is completely pointless (unless of
course your message was a troll ;-).
> interfaces. You must not know your IP addresses. Call the adminstrators
You don't need ifconfig to know your (main) IP address, "hostname -i" is
sufficient.
> instead. Probably they will tell you that they are too busy to come this
> week, but do not fix it yourself. You do not have the root password.
But these users would have the Administrator password for a NT box of
course, wouldn't they?
--
Manfred Wassmann
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