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

[Bart Silverstrim]

Mario Vukelic wrote:
> On Tue, 2008-05-20 at 15:01 -0300, Derek Broughton wrote:
>> Why?  You wouldn't use them, anyway.
> 
> Who knows? If they are any good?
> 
>> I'm talking about theory and best practices, 
> 
> But there are no working implementations of what you envision, so it is
> debatable whether it is even possible in principle, in the real world.
> 
>> and you're acting like a geek who believes that if an idiot end
>> user can do it, it isn't unix.
> 
> He's acting like someone who knows that complex tasks like running
> important unix servers needs complex and sharp tools for the experts.
> May I suggest this essay by Neal Stephenson,
> http://www.cryptonomicon.com/beginning.html

I loved that essay. I think even he said it was dated, though.

What I think the point of the thread should be is that there are times 
when you need to get under the hood to fix something with pinpoint 
precision and knowledge that comes from your experience. When you know 
your baby, you know how to handle it. Sometimes just popping in with a 
text editor is great for that, whether it's because you know the line 
you need to alter or because your monitor just went wonky and you need 
that service working *now* and all you can get is ssh access.

Other times if you're setting up a basic mail server and it's a task 
you're doing for the third time in six months it doesn't hurt to have a 
nifty wizard handle the basic framework of questions...what domain, what 
to relay, what IP, etc...and there, you may have a basic system ready to 
go, then you can use Google to tweak the wrinkles out or customize it more.

System admins are called into various roles all the time, and while we'd 
love to know everything under the sun about the hundred applications we 
have to administer, I don't have time to be an authority on every nuance 
of the postfix, ssh, linux kernel, etc. teams' work and how things 
change. I need Google, and some tasks are rarely visited tasks so I 
forget things or need a refresher. I don't have the luxury of shunning a 
graphical set of checkboxes just because it makes me lose 133t-cred if 
that's what I have to work with, nor do I need to advertise (or hide, 
depending on which zealot camp the reader subscribes to) the fact that I 
used ssh to make a backup of a VM to another server using tar and netcat.

At the end of the day, what counts is getting the job done, I guess. I 
don't care if you did it with a hex editor. "Best approach" is to be 
open to new ideas, but you still gotta find a way to get the job done.