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Re: how to tell people to dpkg-reconfigure exim4-_CONFIG_?



Marc Haber <mh+debian-devel@zugschlus.de> wrote
>   On Mon, 09 Oct 2006 09:23:48 +0200, sean finney <seanius@seanius.net>
>   wrote:
>   >funny, i'd have said the ultimate solution was finding a way to make the
>   >users learn about looking at README.Debian :)

That is, "they should be paying more attention to this important
package".  The trouble is, the same user has installed 1900 other
packages, and their maintainers think they are important, too.

>   That is unrealistic. I expect our users to get more stupid instead of
>   less stupid.

No, but we have an attention economy, and we should expect our users
to get more distracted.  

The thing I really appreciated about Debian after I first installed it
was that someone else was paying attention (to where the configuration
files went, and what versions of what libraries it depended on, and
what the defaults were...) so that I didn't have to spend an hour
studying how to build and set up each package before I even started on
the user documentation.  In other words, I didn't have to pay as much
attention.

There are a few things we *do* want the user to pay attention to, like
passwords, firewall rules, backups, and what services to export.  We
should not demand that he pay close attention to all 1900 packages.
Or even the "important" ones.

I think that if we can figure out how to get

   dpkg-reconfigure exim4

to actually configure exim4, then we should.

            - Jim Van Zandt



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