The Strengths and Weakness of Fedora/RHEL OS management

Shane Stixrud shane at geeklords.org
Mon Mar 27 21:43:38 UTC 2006


On Mon, 27 Mar 2006, sean wrote:

>> This is not a gui issue, nor is it just an "end user issue".  This
>> attitude of "anyone hand editing config files better know what's going on
>> anyways" becomes largely invalid when a standard methodology exists.
>
> I actually don't buy that.   You don't change anything when you go
> to a standard config file format.   Anyone editing at the file/gconf/
> registry level had better know what the heck they're doing.

I do not see it this cut and dry.  There is no line between those people 
who "know what they are doing" and those who do not.

> Everyone else wants a nice GUI that is logically consistent with
> the problem space they're interested in and provides wizards etc
> to explain the configuration process.

I am not saying wizards and interfaces that present multiple change values 
via am interrogated interface is not valuable.  I am saying their value is 
greatly amplified by the needless complexities at the lower layers.  I am 
also saying providing these wizards and interfaces are much more difficult 
to build pragmatically due to these same complexities.

>> Projects already exist http://www.libelektra.org/Main_Page for example.
>> The problem is not that code doesn't exist, the problem is one of getting
>
> But gconf and gconf-2 and others existed before the package you cite.
> Perhaps this one is the end all and be all of config backends.  Dunno.

A package designed to take into account other systems can help with the 
transition, Elektra appears to do this for gconf and I think kde's backend 
is in the works.  I am not saying Elektra is or isn't the solution, only 
that a solution like it is desirable.




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