>>>> Wait - YaST has documentation?
>>>
>>> Um, yes.  man yast for starters.
>>
>> Surely that just tells you the command name and what switches it has?
>
> TRY IT.
>
> That *is* in fact what documentation is, though, so yes - it has
> documentation, and it's included in the man page.

Right. Well knowing what the command switches are isn't going to help me 
configure Apache, is it?

>> You're assuming that I'm just doing it wrong, and not that it's actually
>> a poorly designed system.
>
> I'm assuming you can be taught.  You seem to have an aptitude for
> learning, but you also seem to think that if you believe something is
> impossible, then it damned well is impossible - and nothing anyone says
> is going to change your mind.

If somebody told you that the Earth is in fact flat, would you take the 
time to sit down and have a rational conversation with them? Or would 
you just be like "psssh, yeah RIGHT! Bye..."

Likewise, if you use a piece of software and it's clunky and awkward to 
use, and somebody else is all like "it's divine and perfect and flawless 
in every way, you're just using it wrong", are you likely to investigate 
what they're saying?

>> In my experience:
>>
>> 1. The user-friendly front-ends tend to be quite fragile. If something
>> breaks, you still need to go edit the underlying text file by hand.
>
> My experience with the supposed 'fragility' of those tools is different.
> <shrug>   Maybe 10 years ago it was, but not today.

Well, I suppose short of me spending the next 10 years using Linux all 
day, there's not much we can do to resolve this particular point.

>> 2. The user-friendly tools are completely different for every distro.
>
> And if you learn how to do it with the config files, then you're good for
> most crossplatform applications.  So you have to decide - do you want to
> learn it on a specific distro, or do you want to generalise?
>
> Or do you want to accept that there are different tools, and which one
> you use depends on what you know - and take the time to actually learn
> the tools if you switch from Fedora to openSUSE?

Right. It seems we agree.

> Or you use Webmin, which actually *does* (a) work the same regardless of
> distribution, and (b) can manage the services on multiple distributions.
>
> I mean really - I used it to manage configuration on SunOS, exactly the
> same way I used it on RedHat and SUSE.
>
> But of course, you want to believe that doing so is impossible, so I
> must've imagined it, right?

Like I said, the normal way to configure Linux applications is via 
exiting textual configuration files. I never said it was "impossible" to 
do it any other way. I just said that that is the main cultural focus. 
Which is different from the cultural focus on Windows. That's all I was 
trying to say. Sheesh...

>> I haven't seen much "evidence to the contrary". The entire Unix
>> philosophy seems to revolve around doing everything from the command
>> line.
>
> If you haven't seen much evidence to the contrary, you haven't been
> looking.  Really, you haven't.  I talk to Linux developers fairly
> regularly, and to application developers on occasion who work on OSS
> applications for Linux.  Banshee isn't just a front-end to CLI tools.
> Neither is F-Spot.  Neither is Photivo.  Neither is OpenOffice.  Neither
> is [...] - the list goes on and on and on and on and on and on and ON.

OK. So I've actually heard of one of the items on that list. I'll give 
you that.

> As I recall, it was seen as an appropriate punishment.

> As I recall, they have a specific release of Windows for the EU that
> allows IE to be removed (completely, IIRC).

My spider-sense says something about Windows Media Player... I guess I'd 
have to spend a few hours Googling it to find the real answer.

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