[prev in list] [next in list] [prev in thread] [next in thread] 

List:       kde-core-devel
Subject:    Re: System Configure tool
From:       Andreas Pour <pour () mieterra ! com>
Date:       2001-05-06 1:21:50
[Download RAW message or body]

Chris Schlaeger wrote:
> 
> > IMHO there is a lot of substance to what Charles said, not b/c
> > distributors are incompetent but b/c they have their self-interests to
> > consider.  Whereas UNIX of old was severely hampered by API differences,
> > the same will happen to Linux of new with GUI differences, unless this
> > problem is nipped in the bud.
> 
> The "no common configuration tool" problem certainly exists and I
> think many of the larger distributors are aware of this. But it is
> also true that installation and configuration tools are their most
> prominent differenciator. So they will stick to their own tools as
> long as distribution reviews consists primarly of installation
> descriptions. Having a single set of configuration tools is
> certainly a good goal.
> 
> But wanting these tools to be KDE applications might seem obvious in
> our little KDE world, but neglect the scope of machines Linux covers
> even today. It runs on everything from a wrist watch to an S/390
> mainfraime but KDE only runs on a subset of those. KDE is a desktop
> environment that can be optionally run on a Linux/UNIX
> machine. Bundling the configuration to the GUI would be the same
> mistake that Microsoft has made with windows. There are over 20
> different ways to install or administer a Linux machine. Not even half
> of them require or provide an X11 based install.

Hi,

This is a good point, and exactly why I suggested using a GUI that does
not do the actual administration but (i) gets data from the user; (ii)
passes that data to a known script (e.g., "setnetworkparams.sh"); and
(iii) lets the script implement it.

The nice thing here is someone can also set the environment variables
and call the script in 100 different ways, whether using a web
interface, a GNOME interface or a command line interface.

I hope that alleviates this concern.

> 
> So a common administration suite must also be limited to the least
> common denominator of all Linux systems. This is a text interface or
> even just a simple socket protocol. It's certainly a challeging and
> interesting taks, but for sure not a KDE thing. We might provide a GUI
> interface, but the tools need to there first. Package installers and
> auto-update tools falls into this category as well. They are not a KDE
> thing, they are a distribution thing.

Installing packages is much less of an issue IMHO.

> 
> Currently there are only 2 or 3 different administration suits that
> were all developed by distributors. All provide only basic support for
> a client type machine but took already years to develop. The
> distributors have teams of 5 - 20 developers working full-time on them
> and they hardly get it right for their own distribution. All these
> tools are strongly integrated with the distribution and I can only
> encourage everybody who would like to start such a project to have a
> very close look at the *drake, lizzard and YaST2 sources. And also
> look at their mutation over a couple of releases to get a feeling for
> the strong interconnection of the administration tools and the rest of
> the distro.
> 
> If you want to take the challenge, go ahead, but you probably won't
> get the manpower you need. Administration tools are a no-fun-job. Look
> at the other postings of this threat and look who's not in favour of
> such a project. Most of them know pretty much what they are talking
> about.

But I would think that using the "get the info only and pass it to a
script" approach would work with all these systems.  All each
distribution has to do is re-arrange the data in the proper format and
pass it to their install tools (be it YaST2, lizzard or drake).  I think
your point is valid if the goal was to do a 'linuxconf' that tries to
handle all the updates independently of the distributions.  But
collecting data for the distributions' existing tools makes more sense.

And the distros could still compete in terms of installers and how well
the config tools work.  The only difference will be, when it comes to
KDE, they will have pretty much the same user interface to the config
tool.  (Of course this does not mean the distro cannot have another
config tool as well -- just like sometimes I configure editing text
files, sometimes using linuxconf and sometimes using a distro tool).

Ciao,

Dre

[prev in list] [next in list] [prev in thread] [next in thread]