Re: A 'clean' OS?

From: nameless (namelyouress@myrealbclothesox.com)
Date: 02/17/03 

From: "nameless" <namelyouress@myrealbclothesox.com>
Date: Mon, 17 Feb 2003 21:32:00 GMT

Colonel Sam Flagg, U.S. Army Intelligence (ret) wrote:

> In article <xcb4a.42128$9U3.36531@twister.nyroc.rr.com>,
> namelyouress@myrealbclothesox.com says...
>> To[r+]onado wrote:
>>
>>> Mandrake is not the only [Linux] distro available,
>>> even though it is the user-friendliest.
>>
>> Is this true? I find myself confused when I read all the reviews,
>> opinions, information, and criticisms of the various distros. Some
>> people say SuSe is the easiest to use, others say [insert flavor
>> here], and so on.
>>
>> I've been "wanting to" try Linux for eons, but distro choice is one
>> thing that has been holding me back. I know I don't have the time or
>> patience to try three or four different flavors of Linux, so if I
>> made the splash, I'd "need" for it to be something that didn't
>> disgust me straight off.
>>
>>> You would be amazed to see how user friendly Linux can be.
>>> There is practically nothing you can do in Windows that you can't
>>> make it in Linux in a more productive way. All system/security
>>> settings can be configured/modified through panels and GUI's
>>> similar to those that are being used in Windows
>>
>> This surprises me. Based on what I've heard, using Linux is
>> equivalent to resigning yourself to constant CLI use, and ASCII
>> configuration file editing.
>>
>>
>
> lol.
>
> I have proved this point time and time again. I can edit a .conf file
> in a CLI, start/stop say Apache much faster than a Windows NT Admin
> can do the same for say IIS, with less steps.
>
> Just for the sake of argument, let's start from scratch on a RedHat
> reconfiguration to a website, say you want to add the ability to view
> indexes on a particular web directory.
>
> 1/2) From a command line, there's one less step, from a GUI X-Windows
> desktop, you need to open a terminal, so there's 1/2 steps, depending
> on how you're using your server.
>
> 3) vi /usr/local/apache/conf/httpd.conf
>
> 4) when that opens, simply type: / <enter> type the name of the
> website at the "/" say: /internetwarzone.org <enter> "vi" will find
> the website virtually hosted in the conf file.
>
> 5) in the <directory> option, add "indexes" by using the cursor to go
> to the position to add it, hit "i", type "indexes", hit escape.
>
> 6) hit ":", then "wq", then <enter>
>
> The conf file was modified, now run:
>
> # /usr/local/apache/bin/apachectl restart
>
> You're done. That's either 5 or 6 steps.
>
> Windows guys? Can you narrow it down to 5 or 6?
>
> Even if we split this up to each <enter> constitutes a step, the above
> would be either 6 or 7 steps. If we do that, the Windows Admin that
> thinks he/she can do it in less steps needs to count every click,
> which would constitute an <enter> command.

That's great, but I'm afraid it misses the point. I don't want to spend
half my waking hours learning vague configuration parameters in the
first place!

I have installed Apache on WinXP, and (yes) got it to work. However, I
found it very clumsy to learn and configure. GUIs are easy to criticize
as "crutches" and slow, but that argument goes both ways. If you don't
know or can't remember a particular configuration parm, it's almost
assured that your work would be faster (and less error prone) with a
GUI.

Besides, the two are not mutually exclusive. The best thing would be to
have a GUI which served to edit an ASCII configuration file, which you
could opt to alter manually. 

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