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On Mon, 10 Oct 2011 10:42:46 +0100, Invisible wrote:
>>>> Well, yes and no. Users of SUSE products (openSUSE and SLE*) often
>>>> do know how to do the manual edits, but prefer using YaST anyways.
>>>
>>> If you pull up the documentation for (say) Apache, it won't tell you
>>> how to use the Apache YaST module. It will tell you how to edit the
>>> underlying text file.
>>
>> If you use openSUSE for configuration, you use the openSUSE
>> documentation to see how to use YaST to make those configuration
>> changes.
>
> Wait - YaST has documentation?
Um, yes. man yast for starters.
>> And if that
>> doesn't get you where you need to be, you ask a question in the
>> community.
>>
>> OSS is big about community.
>
> That sounds very nice and all, but if I'm trying to quickly set
> something up, I don't really want to have to go onto the Internet and
> beg for help, and then spend a week or two hoping that somebody
> knowledgeable will just happen across my message and actually take the
> time to give me a helpful response. I want to read a manual that tells
> me how to do this RIGHT NOW.
Right, you'd rather struggle with it for weeks and weeks and then bitch
about how difficult it is to do anything.
Instead of asking a question and getting an answer within a couple of
days so you can actually use it.
>> I guess I imagined all those Technet articles that have the warning I
>> sited earlier about how editing the registry can screw your system up.
>> That must be it, because of course Microsoft would *never* recommend
>> you do something that might bork your system.
>
> The warning is partly there because if you're a clueless user who
> doesn't know how to work a computer properly, it's very easy to do a
> hell of a lot of damage using a registry editor. Personally, I have
> almost never borked my system by editing the registry. The only time
> it's happened is when I started deleting stuff at random in a desperate
> attempt to make something work. If you follow the instructions, it works
> fine.
So, modifying it is dangerous. Or not. The warnings don't exist. Or
they do.
Gotcha.
> My point remains: It's very uncommon to /need/ to touch the registry in
> the first place. Whereas under Unix, the text configuration files are
> the first port of call, not the last. That's just the difference in
> design mentality.
Unless you use YaST, webmin, or one of a myriad of other Linux
configuration tools.
>> Obviously you don't know many Linux users. I know at least 5,000, and
>> many of them not only love and use the GUI, but tend to have religious
>> wars over which GUI is better.
>
> And yet, the vast majority of all Linux software is strictly CLI-only,
> and developers always seem to expect somebody /else/ to build the pretty
> front-end for it.
That's just incorrect. But since you believe it is, it must be true,
regardless of evidence to the contrary.
>>> I notice that there's always a lot of stuff "happening" with Linux.
>>> I'm never sure what the hell any of it actually /does/.
>>
>> Linux (and most OSS software) evolves rather than going through
>> discrete cycles.
>
> Sure. The "release early and often" approach. I'm just saying, as an
> outsider, it's not always clear what actually changed between versions.
> (I guess often it's stuff under the hood that you won't notice anyway.)
Of course it isn't, that's what evolutionary development models do.
>>>> Transactionality is a function of the filesystem, and I use a
>>>> journaled filesystem.
>>>
>>> Doesn't stop two scripts both trying to update the same config file at
>>> the same time. If you do that with the registry, it works. Because
>>> it's a proper database engine, not just a flat file.
>>
>> I'm not sure how "proper" that database engine is - IIRC, it's JET, and
>> most DBAs that I know would say that's certainly not a proper database
>> engine.
>
> JET is no match for an enterprise database engine, sure. But it's more
> transactional than a flat file.
>
> Also, I'm not completely sure that the registry is actually JET. It
> might be, but I didn't think it was. For one thing, registry files grow
> as needed, but never shrink. I don't think JET has that limitation.
FFS, *Active Directory* is (was) JET. Maybe they moved to something else
now, but I know from personal discussions with AD architects at Microsoft
that it is/was JET.
JET has been MS' solution for simple database storage for a number of
years, possibly decades.
>>> Personally, I'm not very impressed by the Windows Update system. Like,
>>> it'll install a bazillion updates for IE6 in the same session as it
>>> also installs IE8. And then you go back and it wants to install a
>>> bunch of IE8 updates. Um, why couldn't you do that the first time
>>> around??
>>
>> Yep, I've been frustrated by that as well.
>
> I'd ask if Linux gets this right - expect Linux generally won't replace
> one version of an application with a totally different one just because
> you asked for security updates...
Depends on the distribution and the updater, but on openSUSE, that's true.
>>> I love how multiple courts have proved that what MS is doing is
>>> illegal, and as a result they have received NO PUNISHMENT OF ANY KIND.
>>> That's such a big motivation for them to stop casually disregarding
>>> the law...
>>
>> Oh, I don't know, having to admit that Firefox is a reasonable browser
>> to use and they should change Windows architecturally to decouple IE
>> from it (or at least loosen the coupling) is a pretty significant
>> sanction.
>
> Admitting you're wrong is one thing. But they did something illegal;
> where is the *financial* pain for that?
Obviously you missed the fact that they paid fines to the EC for their
illegal activities. And they had to reengineer some things - and
engineers at commercial software companies don't tend to work for free.
>> Maintaining multiple versions of an entire operating system can be time
>> and resource intensive.
>
> Maybe it's there then. Still seems like a fairly tiny price for, you
> know, BREAKING THE LAW...
Go look at the fines they paid.
Jim
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