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

[Mario Vukelic]

On Tue, 2008-05-20 at 13:43 -0400, Bart Silverstrim wrote:
> My statement so far appears to still be valid. No one is arguing 
> anything other than the implementation of tools that currently exist, 

There is at least one fundamental problem with GUI-only configurations
that was no addressed: helpdesk. In a Windows office, what do you do if
a user calls you with what turns out to be a config problem? You do a
remote connect, investigate and fix it -- via the GUI, which usually
means that the user cannot do his work in the meantime. With a CLI login
and configuration, you do not impede him.

> and no one has yet to produce a valid argument that wizards, graphical 
> configurators, and CLI tools cannot coexist depending on the situation 
> at hand.

I don't think anyone disagrees that this would be a great solution. For
one, however, the heated discussion occurs because Derek argues that "in
an ideal world" the system should not allow text editor configuration
_at _all. That's a completely different thing from what you say.

In addition, while it would be fantastic if all tools had CLI and
hand-holding GUI config, we cannot close our eyes to the fact that so
far there seems to be not a single good example for a sufficiently
complex application to achieve it. (Does anyone have examples to the
contrary?)

I believe that this is because a good text config file will leave the
admin a lot of leeway wrt formatting, order, options that are set, etc.
Supporting this in a GUI config tool quickly becomes prohibitively
expensive, and therefore GUI tools tend to impose a much stricter format
to the file. This in turn places a greater burden to comply on the
shoulders of CLI admins, who then complain.

In addition, the myriad of options of unix server programs is pretty
impossible to accommodate in a GUI tool, and therefore either GUI tools
provide fewer options, or are horrible to use.


Finally, while in theory it may be possible to build systems that are
correct enough to deal with CLI-produced changes in the GUI, in practice
it frequently leads to problems when both CLI and GUI edits are used.