[ubuntu-za] Updates

[Jonathan Carter]

Hi Bill

Bill Cairns wrote:
> Ja well no fine. I hope that you took my mail in the spirit that it was
> sent ;).

Likewise! (time-traveling-pun-intended)

> I suppose that my problem is, and my concern is, that Ubuntu is
> beginning to adopt the Nanny philosophy that drove me away from loving
> Microsoft in the first place. Yes, support for Exchange is probably a
> good thing (let's undermine them from within as well as from without)
> but nine tenths of us - nine hundred and ninety nine thousandths of us -
> will never want to integrate with an  Exchange server. Surely, support
> for an Exchange server is only going to be a couple of clicks away in
> Synaptic anyway, so why inflict the pain on all of us?

I suppose it's a temporary thing (temporary as in, it will probably
still be with us for a few releases). I'm currently working on a
large-scale migration where we have to work with a Microsoft backend for
now. Doing it any other way would envolve so many complexities that it
would probably make such a migration practically impossible, not
necessarily for technical reasons, but it's just the way it is.
Personally, I think it's fine if some tools are included by default for
now to smooth it out for users who work (or God forbid, live) in a
heavily Microsoft dominated environment where they have little or no
control over it. Ubuntu now has Likewise in main, which provides a user
a simple way to join a Windows domain and authenticate against AD. The
packages weren't quite ready to ship by default in Hardy, but don't be
/too/ surprised if you see it in a default Intrepid installation.

> We have another example lately in Evolution demanding a password for an
> encryption file. Good security if we are going to use encryption. But
> the same 9999/10000 of us don't mind if you publish our email on the
> Internet. So why ask for the password on a file that is completely empty?

What kind of encryption?

> I also run Ubuntu on a very old and ancient Dell machine and have
> struggled to improve its performance by stopping it running (and
> updating) anything it does not need. That means uninstalling a huge
> amount of stuff that (in my ignorant and very humble opinion) should not
> be there in the first place.

Deciding what goes in by default or not is extremely difficult. The
biggest limitation is really the size of the CD Ubuntu can ship on. If
something is shipped by default on Ubuntu, there is usually a very good
reason, and if you do a bit of digging, you should find out why pretty
easily. Nothing wrong with installing things you don't need, of course :)

Have you tried running Xfce as opposed to Gnome on that machine? Xfce is
somewhat friendlier on CPU/RAM and provides a reasonable desktop
environment. Not all the bells and whistles that Gnome has, but the
performance improvements usually justifies it.

> As I said, Ja well no fine.

I can assure you that your reaction to finding something that implies
that you might connect to Exchange is completely normal, and I wouldn't
worry too much about it. As I said before, I think this kind of thing
will continue for a while, because it is necessary for a very huge user
base, but I doubt it will be there forever, many companies are extremely
reluctant to upgrade to Windows Vista, and this is a good time for the
Linux crowd to show the world what they're made of.

-Jonathan