[ubuntu-uk] Desktop or Server?

[Tony Travis]

etali wrote:
> [...]
> If you have the luxury of powerful hardware, and enough knowledge to do
> things both ways, then of course - use what works for you.  I do think
> that newbies should learn things "the hard way" though.  In the past few
> months, on test machines, I've had Webmin throw a fit mess up my server
> configuration for no apparent reason, and I've had XFCE and KDE refuse
> to work after an update. They were salvagable thanks to the wonder of
> the command line, and that's why I encourage people to become familiar
> with "the hard way" first.

Hello, Lesley.

I agree with you about that: It's important to know how to dig yourself 
out of a hole using "busybox", but even then I'm inclined to just boot a 
dodgy server from a 'live' CD and fix it the easy way. It's not quite so 
easy to do that if you don't have physical access to a server, though!

I must admit that I've executed perl scripts via CGI to get software 
working on a web-hosted server that didn't allow me to have a login 
shell! I think you're right, though, that you do have to know how to 
administer servers the hard way - just in case you really need to :-)

Bye,

   Tony.
-- 
Dr. A.J.Travis, University of Aberdeen, Rowett Institute of Nutrition
and Health, Greenburn Road, Bucksburn, Aberdeen AB21 9SB, Scotland, UK
tel +44(0)1224 712751, fax +44(0)1224 716687, http://www.rowett.ac.uk
mailto:a.travis at abdn.ac.uk, http://bioinformatics.rri.sari.ac.uk/~ajt