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

[Derek Broughton]

Chris G wrote:

> On Wed, May 21, 2008 at 11:12:38AM -0300, Derek Broughton wrote:
>> Les Mikesell wrote:
>> 
>> > And the best user interface is always no user interface whenever
>> > it is possible for the machine to do it correctly by itself.
>> 
>> I can't argue with that :-)
> 
> I can!  The problem with the machine doing it correctly by itself is
> that it almost inevitably has to make some default assumptions.

The key though is "almost".  Some developers will take the trade-off and
make assumptions that they think will almost always work.  That's fine as
long as there's a simple way to override the assumptions when they _don't_,
but is not what Les & I had agreed to.  There are cases where such
assumptions can be correct.  For instance, it's inherent in the design of
Ubuntu that the first user set up on the system has sudo access.  Isn't it
much nicer that Ubuntu configures /etc/sudoers for us, than then asking us
to set it up ourselves (as if we even could...)?
-- 
derek