[OT] Debian mailinglists [was: RE: Debian or Ubuntu?]

[Dotan Cohen]

2008/5/20 Mike Bird <mgb-ubuntu at yosemite.net>:
> On Mon May 19 2008 14:45:38 Dotan Cohen wrote:
>> 2008/5/19 Derek Broughton <news at pointerstop.ca>:
>> > Configuration
>> > should always be possible through a question/answer system, rather than
>> > hand-editing, because even the most experienced users make mistakes when
>> > hand-editing, while a GUI tool should always prevent syntactic errors.
>>
>> I very much disagree with you on this one. Configuration should be
>> unambiguous and easy to edit. What kind of GUI config would you use
>> when you ssh into your server? Even on my desktop, I try to use the
>> cli for configuration as much as possible. Other than kcontrol, I
>> haven't used a gui configuration tool since at least Ubuntu 7.04.
>
> I think the key is in the words "should" and "possible".
>
> Believe it or not, some silly routers cannot be configured remotely
> without a web connection.  Some kinds of problems, which can be fixed
> on a Cisco via a telnet chain, require rolling an engineer to the
> colo for silly routers.  Let's not make that mistake with Ubuntu.
>
> Configs MUST always be readily understandable and modifiable by
> both humans-with-texteditors and programs.  Simple text config
> files and maybe XML are acceptable; Windoze registry is not.
>
> Derek's point is that it SHOULD also be possible to edit configs
> via a question/answer system with syntactic and consistency checks.
>

I agree that a GUI interface _in_addition_to_ a text-based interface
would be ideal. However, if it's one or the other, I firmly believe
that text-based is preferable.

Dotan Cohen

http://what-is-what.com
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A: Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text.
Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing?