ZeroConf in Ubuntu Edgy

[Ivan Krstic]

Patrick McFarland wrote:
> So, basically, I haven't quite figured out how to yet.

So you're saying that "if [you] had some sort of large pull in the
Ubuntu project, [you] would have tried to delay a Ubuntu release
indefinitely until such a tool appears," except you have no idea how
such a tool can be produced?

This is a complex issue, and one largely centered around the UI. Adam
and I have a lot of people screaming at us on IRC about the lack of
quality administration tools for Ubuntu Server, but the reason we don't
ship any is because no one wrote any -- good GUI tools for system
administration are notoriously difficult to write. A proper firewall
management tool falls into this category.

A helpful way for you to contribute -- that doesn't involve producing
code -- would be to produce a review of existing firewall interfaces,
akin to what Colin did for the new Ubiquity partitioner:

 https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Ubiquity/AdvancedPartitionerRewrite

Looking at the products that accomplish this on OS X and Windows, and
providing screenshots and short writeups about them, would make the
basis of an excellent spec on producing the killer firewall management
tool for Linux. I don't think this will conflict with Carsten's work,
either, as there's always room for UI improvement, and I believe the UI
wasn't the focus of his work.

Let me point out that we also had a couple of excellent usability people
in Paris who would, I'm sure, be happy to take a look at such a spec and
produce some mockups of a nice, usable GUI for this. If the GUI was
nailed down, writing the actual iptables logic just wouldn't be such a
daunting task anymore, and it's possible Carsten's work could be plugged
in directly.

-- 
Ivan Krstic <krstic at fas.harvard.edu> | GPG: 0x147C722D