RE: Linux: a gentle, growing approach
Ben said:
excellent advice. in fact, i found myself in an involuntary chuckle before i
got to the end of it. it's great to read that someone whose cunning (welches
wissen (?)) i respect has the same opinion of dselect and tasksel. maybe the
banishing of those two crapapples would help demystify debian for many more
tentative users.
ben
I'll put my 2 bobs worth in here:
I disagree to some extent with your comments Ben. Both tasksel and debconf
are tools. Nothing more and nothing less. What you are saying is you don't
like tools, and would rather do things the hard way (I agree generally
better, you learn more and more reliable than an auto tool - I admit that).
An analogy perhaps is in order here - say your car breaks down, flat tire.
Instead of using a spanner to get the nuts off...use your hands to do so.
Or...the tools that auto machine the parts for your car...let's go do them
by hand again...more timely, and more costly to the customer. Not to
mention not as accurate...there goes tools...
See what I mean? It's all too easy to be auto technical etc etc and
dispense with auto tools. But is that wise? On more complex items in linux
(beyond my understanding at this point of time I admit, being a newish linux
user) you can have the potential choice of an auto tool, that demystifies
the setup and makes it quicker (hence getting to use your system quicker) or
you can play with the config file - a process that may be very involved and
complex and time consuming (but you do learn more).
It all boils down to what you want linux to do for you.
Do you want to do operating systems 101?
Or use a damn stable and reliable o/s (unlike some others I can think of...)
Or something else?
I see no real reason why linux should be totally hands on and complex. For
sure those that are technically au fait may wish to do things manually, but
there are a lot more people out there that wish to have auto tools. They
perform a function - LIKE ALL TOOLS THAT MANKIND USES. Manually configuring
things is the BEST way to learn, but it takes time. And time = money.
A lot of people that are coming over to linux from winblows do go to Redhat
et al. Then they get jack of that and come to slackware or debian. What
are they looking for? Reliability, stability, compatibility and freedom of
choice - which linux offers. Unfortunately (and i'm speaking from personal
experience here and I mean this as no personal slight) Redhat et al are
buggy. Unreliable. For sure, not to the same degree as Winblows. But when
compared to debian or slackware etc...that value stability over the latest
and greatest...
Don't knock auto tools, they have their users, and they have their place.
In a perfect world you'd have an auto tool that's perfect, and does what the
enduser wants 100% of the time, fast, and reliable and it covers every
conceivable option. Maybe in the future...
Just remember that not ever linux user wants to be a linux technical uber
geek. Most just want to use it, the best way possible, the quickest way
possible to get the job done.
Dave
PS I don't use the auto tools (well I initially used tasksel during install
but that was it)...and yes despite having kde 3 and gnome 2 on my desktop, I
do all my file management, system administration (what little I know so far)
etc from a terminal in the gui...Just remember people want to generally use
linux for normal use, not a hands on course in operating systems 101.
That's most of the people.
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