Re: Package configuration philosophy
Yoav Cohen-Sivan:
> It seems that Debian is taking a rather different philosophy on
> pre-configured packages than other distributions, such as RedHat. What I
> mean is that after installation of RedHat you have a more or less
> pre-tailored system setup. You can start tweaking your heart out but the
> basics are already there. Debian comes up in a much "rawer" form after
> install
I find your viewpoint interesting, becuase when I installed debian half a
year ago, coming from a redhat background, my reaction was exactly the
opposite.
When you install a redhat package, like a sendmail or smail or bind or
apache, redhat does try to set up reasonable defaults.. but it doesn't go so
far as prompting you for how you want smail set up, or what you're going
to be using your name server for, or how you want apache configured. Redhat
just plops down config files that you have to find and edit.
So when I installed debian, I was pleasantly suprised to find all these
packages prompting me for configuration information in their postinst
scripts, and I ended up with a working system with all the necessary daemons
configured much faster than I expected.
I do notice that all the counterexamples I gave are for daemons, not the
interactive programs like X and fvwm that a new user is going to be faced
with. You you may well be right about debian catering to the more technical
crowd. But with new additions like the debian menu system and so on, I see
debian stating to provide easier configuration for the interactive stuff as
well.
--
#!/usr/bin/perl -i$>=0;$<=0;exec"/bin/sh"'>achmod joey@kite.ml.org
$_="echo '#!/usr/bin/suidperl -U\n$^I 2755aa";s=a= $ENV{HOME}/Imroot;=g;exec$_
# Get root in 30 seconds or less. Fix this hole: upgrade to perl 5.003 today..
"How appropriate, you fight like a cow." - - Guybrush Threepwood
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