On Sat, 08 Oct 2011 11:33:28 +0100, Orchid XP v8 wrote:

>>>> The standard command interpreter in Windows (cmd.exe, not powershell)
>>>> does pretty much suck.  bash/tcsh are *far* more powerful. :)
> 
>>>> But part of the suckage that is the Windows CLI is the registry. 
>>>> Linux using text files for most configuration means that using the
>>>> CLI to make changes actually makes a lot of sense.
> 
>> Like you said, it's an extra install.  sed/grep/awk/perl/vim are
>> standard tools in most Linux installs.
>>
>> I can edit text files without installing tools that are non standard.
> 
> 1.
> 
> Unix was explicitly designed to be an OS for computer experts. It
> assumes you know what you're doing. It provides no help or assistence of
> any kind. Commands print status messages only in the event of a problem.
> Success is indicated by silence. There are few warning prompts or
> confirmation messages.

Well, yes and no.  It was designed for people who work with computers, 
yes.  It does have plenty of warning prompts and confirmation messages, 
but it does vary from program to program.

> Windows is explicitly designed to be used by morons. The kind of people
> who shouldn't even be let near anything more complicated than a
> doorbell. The sort of people who will double-click
> "Natasha_Beddingfield_Naked.jpg.exe" because they want to see it. The
> kind of people who probably shouldn't be allowed to handle sharp objects
> either.

Ironically, Windows until recently has done a pretty piss poor job of 
actually keeping people from injuring themselves.  Why?  Because Gates' 
initial specifications were for no security.  Windows since WinNT has had 
to deal with backwards compatibility, and is *finally* getting to a point 
where it's harder for a user to aim the bazooka at their foot and pull 
the trigger.

UAC is a pain in the ass for advanced users.  It's a necessary component 
for the average user.

> 2.
> 
> To configure a Unix program, you must manually edit text files. To
> configure a Windows program, you use an actual options screen, which
> does things like prevent you selecting invalid combinations of features,
> refering to non-existent paths, and so on. In the main, this is /easier/
> than editing text files. You don't have to worry about mistyping things,
> for example.

No.  Many UNIX programs have GUIs now.  You may well have heard of CDE, 
KDE, GNOME, LXDE, Unity - all GUIs.  You may also have heard of YaST, 
Webmin, and other GUI-based (and web-based) admin tools that don't 
require you edit text files and do let you select from a predefined list.

> You want to configure something from the CLI? Why do you want to do that
> in the first place? Given that it's generally harder than just using the
> GUI (and it's not like Windows /has/ a CLI-only mode), what are you
> trying to accomplish?

Why do I want to configure something from the CLI?  My server is 
headless, and dedicating memory to the GUI sucks resources.  So I have a 
server that I run without a GUI at all.  CLI editing is faster *if you 
know what you're doing*.

> CMD.EXE is for backwards compatibility only. For new applications, you
> want to be using some powerful scripting language, or writing a full
> compiled binary program.

CMD.EXE is quite useful.  I still use it on Windows Server 2008R2 and 
Windows 7 to perform filesystem operations.  Why?  Because I can do many 
of those things faster with a command prompt than with a mouse.  Removing 
my hand from the keyboard and using the mouse slows me down.  Time is 
money.  Wasted time is lost money.

> It is perfectly possible to programmatically edit the Registry. Indeed,
> it's /easier/ than manipulating text files. You don't have to figure out
> where the hell the file is stored and learn /yet another/ file format.
> You just issue a couple of Win32 calls. All programs store their
> configuration data in a single, common format - the registry.

Hmmm, so writing a program to edit the registry is faster than going to /
etc/apache2 and editing httpd.conf?  I don't think so.

And of course tweaking a configuration item in IIS is usually a bit more 
complicated than editing a single registry key.  Which of course you have 
to find where the key is stored.  What part of the hive is it in?

> On the down side, registry settings tend to be completely undocumented.

Oh, and more than that, Microsoft routinely warns people *not* to edit 
the registry if they don't know what they're doing, and most of the 
Technet articles I've seen that include editing the registry include a 
"proceed at your own risk" disclaimer in case you totally fuck the system 
over with your change.

I have yet to see a text file change on a Linux system that can hork the 
system up as badly as Microsoft wants you to believe Windows can be 
messed up with a single registry change.

Because with Linux it's pretty rare to have to reboot to affect the 
change.  It's sometimes easier, but to this day, I continue to be amazed 
at how frequently a Windows system has to be restarted.  Twice during 
installation, and if you're applying system updates, sometimes multiple 
times to get everything current (certainly with XP, later versions are 
somewhat better).

> But usually, if you can figure out where the root key for your
> application is, just deleting the whole let will reset everything to
> defaults. And there are tools that let you watch the registry. You can
> go into your application, change some settings, and then see what
> registry changes happened. You can then apply those changes to a dozen
> machines remotely, for example. Try doing that with diff and patch...

And of course you can't possibly ever do that on a *nix system, ever.

Oh, wait, yes you can.  You've pretty much always been able to. :P

> There are even tools to automate some of this. With just a factory
> default install of a Windows server OS, I can press a few buttons in a
> GUI and apply configuration settings to every Windows machine on the
> network. With Unix, I'd have to go off and script something.

Wrong.

With openSUSE, for example, I can do an installation and at the end of 
the installation, the installer asks if I want to create an autoyast file 
so I can clone the system or do identical installs for multiple servers.

Trivial.  No scripting required.

> For example, where I work:
> - Every PC has the screensaver set to come on after 2 minutes. You must
> use a password to unlock it. Users cannot turn this setting off. - Every
> PC has Windows Update permanently turned on. The guys at HQ decide which
> individual updates to install. - Every PC has its time synchronised to
> the same timesource. Users cannot change the system time.
> 
> In addition, at the touch of a button, the guys at HQ can make every PC
> on the network (or just certain groups of them) install a specific piece
> of software.
> 
> If you wanted to do any of this with Linux, you would have a whole bunch
> of scripting ahead of you. Under Windows, it just takes a few button
> presses to set up. You just can't do it from the end-user versions of
> Windows; it requires a server OS. (Three guesses why those cost so much
> more.)

Wrong, again on the Linux front.  I personally know people who administer 
*thousands* of Linux servers.  I worked for a company that has a product 
to apply updates on a schedule to remote Linux systems.

> In summary:
> 
> You can configure Windows just as easily as, if not /more/ easily than a
> Unix system. Linux may come with sed and store its configuration in text
> files, but a Windows server controlling several Windows clients can do
> all the same stuff, and usually without you having to actually develop a
> suite of sed scripts all by yourself.

Nope, and to state this is pretty much an uninformed opinion based on a 
deep(er) knowledge of Windows and a lack of knowledge about modern Linux 
systems and how they're deployed in corporate environments.

Jim

Post a reply to this message

On Fri, 07 Oct 2011 21:39:39 -0700, Darren New wrote:

> On 10/7/2011 20:43, Jim Henderson wrote:
>> Sounds *so* familiar.  Another reason to use Linux. ;)
> 
> How the hell would that help? What, the file navigators and web browsers
> in Linux automatically tell you what part of the window is important?

It helps because I can claim that I don't know much about modern versions 
of Windows and point my mom to someone who's local to get help with her 
problems. ;)

> What helped was getting him off dial-up so I could talk to him at the
> same time he's on the net, *and* connect into his computer remotely.

I've a friend who lives in Germany; he supports his 84-year old mother 
(who is in Canada) remotely, and she's an openSUSE user.

She apparently recently got a call from one of these new scammers 
claiming to be Microsoft needing to remotely access her machine to 
install critical updates.

Much hilarity ensued, since she knew it was nothing to do with her 
machine because it runs openSUSE.  :)

Jim

Post a reply to this message

On Sat, 08 Oct 2011 11:36:10 +0100, Stephen wrote:

> On 07/10/2011 8:08 PM, Jim Henderson wrote:
>> I find myself often trying to drive someone else's computer by using my
>> voice.  I tell you, voice control of another person's computer with
>> them interpreting is probably one of the more frustrating things to do.
>>
>>
> I point or if it is a long process ask if they mind if I drive.

Hard to do when a voice connection is all I'm working from.

>> Or when my mom starts reading an error message to me - and after three
>> words, I know what the next thing is and what to do next.
> 
> A good son. :-)

Sometimes it's quite frustrating, though - for example, "My skype no 
longer works".  Then she tries to tell me on the phone (as at that point 
I usually would talk to her on handsfree in the car on the way home from 
the office) what it's doing.

So to get around that, she bought a smart phone.  Now she doesn't know 
how to get her voice mail.  *sigh*

(The connection as to why she got a smart phone isn't obvious until you 
know that the reason she uses Skype is to talk to my brother in Japan - 
and Skype not working on her desktop means she needs another way to avoid 
running up a hideous phone bill to talk with Steve)

Jim

Post a reply to this message

On Fri, 07 Oct 2011 22:13:22 -0700, Patrick Elliott wrote:

> Not sure it was here, or somewhere else, but I seem to remember a
> comment on one of the problems in a class a person was attending, where
> the prof thought it was *way* more important to remember the equation,
> than how to bloody use it for something.

It was here, and it was I who made the comment. :)

Jim

Post a reply to this message

On 08/10/2011 5:59 AM, Patrick Elliott wrote:
> On 10/7/2011 12:10 PM, Stephen wrote:
>> I'll top post as I'm sure nobody wants to read all that again.
>>
>> What do you mean?
>>
> Sorry, much of that was a rant, attached to an initial joke. lol

⸮ Much?

> The joke being that you old fogies sometimes seem to think toolbars are
> silly, and memorizing 8,000 keyboard combination makes more sense. Some
> of us just don't think that way.
>

I think that may be wrong there. Toolbars are not silly they are very 
useful.

8,000 keyboard combinations as starters. ;-)


-- 
Regards
     Stephen

Post a reply to this message

>> I've never figured out how to get out of dependency hell in Linux. Like,
>> you ask it to install one tiny application, and it wants to install an
>> entire ecosystem to support that.
>
> In Windows, you have the entire ecosystem to support it.  It's called
> "Windows".

Yeah, that's basically what it comes down to.

"Windows" is a product. You install it, or you don't install it. And 
that's about all there is to it.

"Linux" is a huge soup of different applications and programs written by 
hundreds of people over the course of several decades. There are so many 
features and options. There are a dozen different ways to accomplish 
every task. And every user-level program will use a different one of 
those subsystems, so you have to redundantly install and configure 
almost all of them.

> As a friend of mine who works for Microsoft said when I complained about
> Windows 7's insane use of disk space for 'caching' OS install files and
> the whole MSOCache, "What's the problem?  You can buy a 2 TB drive for
> under a hundred bucks - what's 30 GB of space to cache these install
> files?"

See, to some of us "a hundred bucks" is actually quite a lot of money. 
My current PC has 4 drives in it totalling less than 1 TB all together. 
If I was going to go to all the expensive of buying a terabyte of 
storage, it would be because I want to store a terabyte of *useful 
data*. Not just so that Windows will get out of bed. Sheesh...

> If you want a simple editor, look at nano, vi, or joe.  Small footprint,
> small dependency list.

Yeah, and really awkward to operate.

Of course, it was just an example. It doesn't really matter which 
program you're talking about; if you have KDE and want to run a GNOME 
application (or vice versa), you're going to have to install two entire 
WMs, even though you only ever use one of them.

>> I've never tried to install a Windows application and had to download 8
>> GB of data,
>
> That's because in Windows you have one desktop environment, and one set
> of dependencies.  Choice comes with a cost.  If you don't want the
> choices, use Windows.  Or Mac.

Oddly enough, I do use Windows. (I've never actually seen a physical Mac 
except in a shop.)

>> or had my entire Windows installation completely cease
>> functioning to the point where I have to reinstall.
>
> "Orchid XP v8" - you once said that the "v8" indicated how many times you
> had reinstalled Windows XP.  So I call BS. ;)

I've never had software break my PC so badly that reinstalling was the 
only way to get it to work again. I've had /plenty/ of software refuse 
to uninstall cleanly, or install stuff I didn't want. Now and then I 
usually end up reinstalling Windows just to keep it tidy. But I've never 
been /forced/ to reinstall. It's always been something I decided to do 
voluntarily.

>> About the worst
>> thing that can happen is that you need to install the .NET runtime.
>> (Obviously, this problem is because .NET exists. If we could get rid of
>> that, the problem would go away.)
>
> It seems you'd be happier with statically linked executables.

Well, that way you would only be downloading the libraries that the 
problem actually /uses/...

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

Post a reply to this message

On Sat, 08 Oct 2011 12:53:41 +0100, Orchid XP v8 wrote:

> "Windows" is a product. You install it, or you don't install it. And
> that's about all there is to it.
> 
> "Linux" is a huge soup of different applications and programs written by
> hundreds of people over the course of several decades. There are so many
> features and options. There are a dozen different ways to accomplish
> every task. And every user-level program will use a different one of
> those subsystems, so you have to redundantly install and configure
> almost all of them.

Well, technically, "Linux" is the kernel.  GNU/Linux is the system, and a 
distribution is GNU/Linux + applications.

>> As a friend of mine who works for Microsoft said when I complained
>> about Windows 7's insane use of disk space for 'caching' OS install
>> files and the whole MSOCache, "What's the problem?  You can buy a 2 TB
>> drive for under a hundred bucks - what's 30 GB of space to cache these
>> install files?"
> 
> See, to some of us "a hundred bucks" is actually quite a lot of money.
> My current PC has 4 drives in it totalling less than 1 TB all together.
> If I was going to go to all the expensive of buying a terabyte of
> storage, it would be because I want to store a terabyte of *useful
> data*. Not just so that Windows will get out of bed. Sheesh...

Well, yes, and that was my point to my friend.  I don't have an extra 
hundred bucks kicking around right now because I'm currently seeking a 
job (yes, 5 months now I've been looking).

I've got a 2 TB external USB drive, but try running a Win7 VM over a USB2 
connection.  Performance is going to suck, pretty much guaranteed.  I 
also need more memory for this system.

>> If you want a simple editor, look at nano, vi, or joe.  Small
>> footprint, small dependency list.
> 
> Yeah, and really awkward to operate.

Convenience comes at a price, but nano isn't terribly awkward to 
operate.  No moreso than Edit on MS-DOS was, IIRC.  (I might be thinking 
of joe).

> Of course, it was just an example. It doesn't really matter which
> program you're talking about; if you have KDE and want to run a GNOME
> application (or vice versa), you're going to have to install two entire
> WMs, even though you only ever use one of them.

If you install a GNOME application, you're using the GNOME libraries (a 
key part of the window manager) and GTK+ widgets.

>>> or had my entire Windows installation completely cease functioning to
>>> the point where I have to reinstall.
>>
>> "Orchid XP v8" - you once said that the "v8" indicated how many times
>> you had reinstalled Windows XP.  So I call BS. ;)
> 
> I've never had software break my PC so badly that reinstalling was the
> only way to get it to work again. I've had /plenty/ of software refuse
> to uninstall cleanly, or install stuff I didn't want. Now and then I
> usually end up reinstalling Windows just to keep it tidy. But I've never
> been /forced/ to reinstall. It's always been something I decided to do
> voluntarily.

Same here with Linux.  In fact, upgrading my laptop to openSUSE 12.1 beta 
1 right now.  My choice, and I may take it back to 11.4 as I need it 
working on Tuesday-Friday next week.

>>> About the worst
>>> thing that can happen is that you need to install the .NET runtime.
>>> (Obviously, this problem is because .NET exists. If we could get rid
>>> of that, the problem would go away.)
>>
>> It seems you'd be happier with statically linked executables.
> 
> Well, that way you would only be downloading the libraries that the
> problem actually /uses/...

Well, no, you wouldn't be, because they'd be in the actual program.  But 
then you get into poor code reuse and duplication of shareable code, 
which eats up disk space.

Jim

Post a reply to this message

On 08/10/2011 01:05 PM, Jim Henderson wrote:
> On Sat, 08 Oct 2011 12:53:41 +0100, Orchid XP v8 wrote:
>
>> "Windows" is a product. You install it, or you don't install it. And
>> that's about all there is to it.
>>
>> "Linux" is a huge soup of different applications and programs written by
>> hundreds of people over the course of several decades. There are so many
>> features and options. There are a dozen different ways to accomplish
>> every task. And every user-level program will use a different one of
>> those subsystems, so you have to redundantly install and configure
>> almost all of them.
>
> Well, technically, "Linux" is the kernel.  GNU/Linux is the system, and a
> distribution is GNU/Linux + applications.

Strictly speaking, that is of course true. However, that's not what is 
usually meant in common usage.

>> See, to some of us "a hundred bucks" is actually quite a lot of money.
>
> Well, yes, and that was my point to my friend.

This is something Microsoft has always historically not seemed to 
understand.

>> Of course, it was just an example. It doesn't really matter which
>> program you're talking about; if you have KDE and want to run a GNOME
>> application (or vice versa), you're going to have to install two entire
>> WMs, even though you only ever use one of them.
>
> If you install a GNOME application, you're using the GNOME libraries (a
> key part of the window manager) and GTK+ widgets.

I understand /why/ this happens. It's just frustrating, is all. I don't 
see why I should need to install Samba. Why can't I just install, you 
know, the GTK+ widgets? It seems to me that Linux dependency chains are 
just /way/ too coarse.

>> I've never had software break my PC so badly that reinstalling was the
>> only way to get it to work again.
>
> Same here with Linux.  In fact, upgrading my laptop to openSUSE 12.1 beta
> 1 right now.  My choice, and I may take it back to 11.4 as I need it
> working on Tuesday-Friday next week.

OK, that's astonishing. Every attempt I've never made at upgrading an 
existing Linux install from one distro release to another has /always/ 
ended in massive breakage, usually to the point that when I boot the 
system the kernel just panics and stops. You would have thought clicking 
"upgrade now" and waiting for the progress bar to finish would work, but 
noooo...

>>> It seems you'd be happier with statically linked executables.
>>
>> Well, that way you would only be downloading the libraries that the
>> problem actually /uses/...
>
> Well, no, you wouldn't be, because they'd be in the actual program.  But
> then you get into poor code reuse and duplication of shareable code,
> which eats up disk space.

Yeah, there's a down-side too.

Really, I'd just be happier if I could install just the functionallity 
that's strictly necessary, rather than installing everything even 
remotely related. Linux package manages seem to do a really poor job of 
dependency management. (Don't get me started on when one random program 
decides it wants a different version of the Linux kernel or something...)

Still, the problem escalates to a whole new level if you try to install 
something /not/ available from your distro's package manager. Everybody 
raves about how great it is that you can install everything from a big 
old list. But you can't, of course. There will be packages that aren't 
in the list.

Under Windows, if you want to install something, you just download it 
and install it. Under Linux, you probably have to download a tarball, 
work out how to unzip and untar it, figure out where the "install me 
now" script is, and then watch as it directs you to install a different 
version of gcc, asks where the kernel header files are, tries to 
auto-detect the stuff it needs... It almost never works. To the point 
where which Linux I use on my VM depends mostly on which one has VMware 
driver packages provided.

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

Post a reply to this message

>> 1.
>>
>> Unix was explicitly designed to be an OS for computer experts. It
>> assumes you know what you're doing. It provides no help or assistence of
>> any kind. Commands print status messages only in the event of a problem.
>> Success is indicated by silence. There are few warning prompts or
>> confirmation messages.
>
> Well, yes and no.  It was designed for people who work with computers,
> yes.  It does have plenty of warning prompts and confirmation messages,
> but it does vary from program to program.

I'm told part of this also dates back to the time before video displays, 
where command responses actually got printed on paper, and the 
communication was over a slow serial link.

>> Windows is explicitly designed to be used by morons. The kind of people
>> who shouldn't even be let near anything more complicated than a
>> doorbell.
>
> Ironically, Windows until recently has done a pretty piss poor job of
> actually keeping people from injuring themselves.  Why?  Because Gates'
> initial specifications were for no security.

Well, in the days before computer networks, security was pretty much a 
moot point. The only way to compromise a computer is to gain physical 
access. If somebody has physical access, there's not much you can do in 
software.

> Windows since WinNT has had
> to deal with backwards compatibility, and is *finally* getting to a point
> where it's harder for a user to aim the bazooka at their foot and pull
> the trigger.

Yeah, they do tend to prioritise easy of use higher than security, which 
isn't particularly to my liking. But hey...

> UAC is a pain in the ass for advanced users.  It's a necessary component
> for the average user.

What's UAC? Is that new in Windows 7 or something? (I've only used Vista.)

>> 2.
>>
>> To configure a Unix program, you must manually edit text files. To
>> configure a Windows program, you use an actual options screen, which
>> does things like prevent you selecting invalid combinations of features,
>> refering to non-existent paths, and so on. In the main, this is /easier/
>> than editing text files. You don't have to worry about mistyping things,
>> for example.
>
> No.  Many UNIX programs have GUIs now.  You may well have heard of CDE,
> KDE, GNOME, LXDE, Unity - all GUIs.  You may also have heard of YaST,
> Webmin, and other GUI-based (and web-based) admin tools that don't
> require you edit text files and do let you select from a predefined list.

...until you want to configure something that the GUI doesn't have an 
option for. Or you run some script which auto-configured your Apache, 
and now the shiny Apache front-end can't understand the config file any 
more and gets all confused. Or you do anything slightly advanced.

See, the configuration files are still the primary interface for 
configuring most stuff. The new GUI front-ends that most Linux 
distributions ship with now are exactly that - front-ends that make the 
thing look a bit more pretty. It's all too easy to break them though, or 
to end up with cryptic error messages and need to look under the hood to 
find the "real" error and how to fix it.

Windows programs tend to be designed around the GUI first and foremost. 
(Which isn't eithout drawbacks; it makes scripting harder, for example.)

> Why do I want to configure something from the CLI?  My server is
> headless, and dedicating memory to the GUI sucks resources.  So I have a
> server that I run without a GUI at all.  CLI editing is faster *if you
> know what you're doing*.

Right. That isn't something that is going to worry the average home user 
who's just trying to surf the 'net. That's something only a computer 
expert would care about. And there are various tools for doing it. 
(E.g., apparently Computer Management works remotely now. And you can 
script it.)

> CMD.EXE is quite useful.  I still use it on Windows Server 2008R2 and
> Windows 7 to perform filesystem operations.  Why?  Because I can do many
> of those things faster with a command prompt than with a mouse.  Removing
> my hand from the keyboard and using the mouse slows me down.  Time is
> money.  Wasted time is lost money.

The CLI /is/ superior for certain tasks. That's why it exists, after 
all. I won't dispute that. (Although CMD.EXE is a fairly week 
implementation of the concept.)

>> It is perfectly possible to programmatically edit the Registry. Indeed,
>> it's /easier/ than manipulating text files. You don't have to figure out
>> where the hell the file is stored and learn /yet another/ file format.
>> You just issue a couple of Win32 calls. All programs store their
>> configuration data in a single, common format - the registry.
>
> Hmmm, so writing a program to edit the registry is faster than going to /
> etc/apache2 and editing httpd.conf?  I don't think so.

Firing up RegEdit and going to the appropriate key is roughly as easy as 
opening up a text editor on your program's configuration file. The only 
real difference is that configuration files usually have actual 
documentation, whereas the registry typically doesn't.

>> On the down side, registry settings tend to be completely undocumented.
>
> Oh, and more than that, Microsoft routinely warns people *not* to edit
> the registry if they don't know what they're doing, and most of the
> Technet articles I've seen that include editing the registry include a
> "proceed at your own risk" disclaimer in case you totally fuck the system
> over with your change.
>
> I have yet to see a text file change on a Linux system that can hork the
> system up as badly as Microsoft wants you to believe Windows can be
> messed up with a single registry change.

Looking at the registry is effectively like looking at every 
configuration file on your entire Linux box. Sure, /most/ settings that 
you could change won't do any harm. However, since the harmless ones are 
right next to the utterly critical ones, one wrong step can totally 
floor the system. Possibly instantly. (Another thing about the registry: 
changes can take effect immediately. How many Linux programs "watch" 
their configuration file(s)?)

> Because with Linux it's pretty rare to have to reboot to affect the
> change.  It's sometimes easier, but to this day, I continue to be amazed
> at how frequently a Windows system has to be restarted.  Twice during
> installation, and if you're applying system updates, sometimes multiple
> times to get everything current (certainly with XP, later versions are
> somewhat better).

Ubuntu seems to contantly want me to reboot when I install updates too. 
I think the problem is more that Windows requires updating more often.

>> There are even tools to automate some of this. With just a factory
>> default install of a Windows server OS, I can press a few buttons in a
>> GUI and apply configuration settings to every Windows machine on the
>> network. With Unix, I'd have to go off and script something.
>
> Wrong.
>
> With openSUSE, for example, I can do an installation and at the end of
> the installation, the installer asks if I want to create an autoyast file
> so I can clone the system or do identical installs for multiple servers.
>
> Trivial.  No scripting required.

You mean WITH ONE PARTICULAR LINUX it's trivial.

That's just it. Windows is one product, with one set of management 
tools. The original Unix, as best as I can tell, has almost no 
management features at all. You're supposed to roll your own. So every 
major distro builder has built their own independent system of 
management tools.

If you wanted to compare how easy this is, you can't really compare 
"Windows" to "Linux". You'd have to compare "Windows" to "Debian", 
"Ubuntu", "OpenSUSE", "Fedora", ...

>> For example, where I work:
>> - Every PC has the screensaver set to come on after 2 minutes. You must
>> use a password to unlock it.
>>
>> In addition, at the touch of a button, the guys at HQ can make every PC
>> on the network (or just certain groups of them) install a specific piece
>> of software.
>>
>> If you wanted to do any of this with Linux, you would have a whole bunch
>> of scripting ahead of you.
>
> Wrong, again on the Linux front.  I personally know people who administer
> *thousands* of Linux servers.  I worked for a company that has a product
> to apply updates on a schedule to remote Linux systems.

A company that "makes a product" to enable you to do this.

Yes, almost /any/ OS can have software written for it that makes remote 
management easy. The question is how widely available that is.

>> In summary:
>>
>> You can configure Windows just as easily as, if not /more/ easily than a
>> Unix system.
>
> Nope, and to state this is pretty much an uninformed opinion based on a
> deep(er) knowledge of Windows and a lack of knowledge about modern Linux
> systems and how they're deployed in corporate environments.

I think we can summarise as follows:

Unix gives you standard tools for building any kind of management 
infrastructure you can imagine. But it doesn't actually provide such an 
infrastructure by default.

Windows gives you one standard set of management tools, out of the box. 
If those tools don't quite cover what you want, you have a slightly 
harder problem then you would with Unix, but it's hardly intractable.

And, I would imagine, various individual Linux distros probably provide 
their own unique management tools. I doubt any of these work for more 
than one distro, however...

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

Post a reply to this message

On Sat, 08 Oct 2011 13:18:14 +0100, Orchid XP v8 wrote:

> On 08/10/2011 01:05 PM, Jim Henderson wrote:
>> On Sat, 08 Oct 2011 12:53:41 +0100, Orchid XP v8 wrote:
>>
>>> "Windows" is a product. You install it, or you don't install it. And
>>> that's about all there is to it.
>>>
>>> "Linux" is a huge soup of different applications and programs written
>>> by hundreds of people over the course of several decades. There are so
>>> many features and options. There are a dozen different ways to
>>> accomplish every task. And every user-level program will use a
>>> different one of those subsystems, so you have to redundantly install
>>> and configure almost all of them.
>>
>> Well, technically, "Linux" is the kernel.  GNU/Linux is the system, and
>> a distribution is GNU/Linux + applications.
> 
> Strictly speaking, that is of course true. However, that's not what is
> usually meant in common usage.

And, truth be told, most of the preconfiguration that's done during 
installation is sufficient for the majority of users.  So no, no need to 
configure "all of them".

>>> See, to some of us "a hundred bucks" is actually quite a lot of money.
>>
>> Well, yes, and that was my point to my friend.
> 
> This is something Microsoft has always historically not seemed to
> understand.

Well, in defense of my friend at Microsoft, he was in the consulting 
organisation, and they ordered *15,000* laptops from a particular 
manufacturer just for their consultants.

It's hard to understand why people have trouble affording a single hard 
drive when you buy in such bulk quantities.

But he's a funny guy - actually quite cynical about the tech industry as 
a whole.  He's called the whole thing a 'scam' for years.

>>> Of course, it was just an example. It doesn't really matter which
>>> program you're talking about; if you have KDE and want to run a GNOME
>>> application (or vice versa), you're going to have to install two
>>> entire WMs, even though you only ever use one of them.
>>
>> If you install a GNOME application, you're using the GNOME libraries (a
>> key part of the window manager) and GTK+ widgets.
> 
> I understand /why/ this happens. It's just frustrating, is all. I don't
> see why I should need to install Samba. Why can't I just install, you
> know, the GTK+ widgets? It seems to me that Linux dependency chains are
> just /way/ too coarse.

That's because you've never spent time looking at those interdependencies.

After all, on Windows, you have CIFS/SMB available on all systems by 
default.  You take it for granted on Windows, but for the rest of the 
world, there is a choice.

>>> I've never had software break my PC so badly that reinstalling was the
>>> only way to get it to work again.
>>
>> Same here with Linux.  In fact, upgrading my laptop to openSUSE 12.1
>> beta 1 right now.  My choice, and I may take it back to 11.4 as I need
>> it working on Tuesday-Friday next week.
> 
> OK, that's astonishing. Every attempt I've never made at upgrading an
> existing Linux install from one distro release to another has /always/
> ended in massive breakage, usually to the point that when I boot the
> system the kernel just panics and stops. You would have thought clicking
> "upgrade now" and waiting for the progress bar to finish would work, but
> noooo...

I've upgraded openSUSE from 11.0->11.1->11.2->11.4 (I gave 11.3 a miss).  
This upgrade I'm running now is a beta, so I expected problems.  And I 
got them, the upgrade failed and gave me the very helpful error message 
"An error occurred during the upgrade".  Nice.  That's getting reported.

Booted the system and GRUB thinks it's still 11.4 (as the grub update 
didn't apparently run) and there were a few hundred packages still to 
update.  Not sure why it failed, and the log went when I rebooted it.

So, booted the system manually, replaced the repos with the proper repos, 
and am doing a "zypper dup" to upgrade it.

Fortunately, I backed up the old partitions with partimage, so I can 
restore them if necessary.

The worst upgrade hell I've ever heard of, though, was MS' own corporate 
upgrade from Windows Server 2000 to Windows Server 2003.  I was told they 
upgraded to each incremental pre-release alpha, beta, and release 
candidate on several of their internal servers.  It was a nightmare, and 
the basis of their recommendation to do rip-and-replace upgrades rather 
than in-place upgrades.

>>>> It seems you'd be happier with statically linked executables.
>>>
>>> Well, that way you would only be downloading the libraries that the
>>> problem actually /uses/...
>>
>> Well, no, you wouldn't be, because they'd be in the actual program. 
>> But then you get into poor code reuse and duplication of shareable
>> code, which eats up disk space.
> 
> Yeah, there's a down-side too.

There are always tradeoffs.

> Really, I'd just be happier if I could install just the functionallity
> that's strictly necessary, rather than installing everything even
> remotely related. Linux package manages seem to do a really poor job of
> dependency management. (Don't get me started on when one random program
> decides it wants a different version of the Linux kernel or
> something...)

Programs usually don't care about the kernel version, unless they're 
kernel modules (or provide them).

RPM does a pretty good job of dependency management, but you have to take 
care not to add too many repositories, and don't mix and match repo 
versions.  That'll break things quite quickly.

For openSUSE, it's generally recommended you have 4 repos and no more:

1.  OSS
2.  Non-OSS
3.  Update
4.  Packman

And that's it.  Anything more and - if you're inexperienced - you'll end 
up shooting yourself in the foot, and probably take the other foot off 
for good measure along with 3 fingers on your left hand.

But, in true Linux fashion, you'll get to choose the 2 remaining 
fingers. ;)

> Still, the problem escalates to a whole new level if you try to install
> something /not/ available from your distro's package manager. Everybody
> raves about how great it is that you can install everything from a big
> old list. But you can't, of course. There will be packages that aren't
> in the list.

Actually, with openSUSE's Open Build Service, you can.  If you don't find 
something you need and it's OSS, ask in the forums if someone can build 
it - if it isn't already there under someone's home project in OBS, 
there's a guy on staff (malcolmlewis) who has been happy to get the 
package built.

Oh, and OBS?  Builds packages not just for openSUSE.  It can build for 
RedHat, Fedora, Debian, Ubuntu, and a few others.

> Under Windows, if you want to install something, you just download it
> and install it. Under Linux, you probably have to download a tarball,
> work out how to unzip and untar it, figure out where the "install me
> now" script is, and then watch as it directs you to install a different
> version of gcc, asks where the kernel header files are, tries to
> auto-detect the stuff it needs... It almost never works. 

Certainly if you don't know what you're doing, it almost never works.  If 
you know what you're doing, then it almost never fails (and when it does, 
it's usually a dependency version issue or a bug in the code that 
prevents the compile from happening).

Again, OBS solves this problem for a lot of distros, not just openSUSE.  
It even builds the packages for you on a server farm located "out there" 
somewhere.  Multiple architectures, too.  It's pretty slick.

> To the point
> where which Linux I use on my VM depends mostly on which one has VMware
> driver packages provided.

VMware provides their own tools, but there are free (as in OSS) tools as 
well.  ISTR they're included with openSUSE, in fact.

Jim

Post a reply to this message