On 22/03/07, Marc Espie <espie@nerim.net> wrote:
quoted text
> On Thu, Mar 22, 2007 at 03:28:29PM -0400, Douglas Allan Tutty wrote:
> > Their challenge is that they need to provide choice so they
> > have what they call reasonable defaults.
>
> No, they don't need to provide choice. At least not that many. They decide
> to do so.  That's most of what's wrong with OS stuff these days. Too
> many choices.  Too many knobs. Every day, I see people shoot themselves in
> the foot, not managing to administer boxes and networks in a simple way,
> making stupid decisions that don't serve any purpose.
>
> ACL, enforced security policies, reverse proxy setups, user accounts,
> network user groups, PAM, openldap, reiserfs, ext3fs, ext2fs...
> so many choices. So many wrong choices.

Multiple user accounts and a journalling facility on a filesystem ==
wrong: Interesting perspective.

quoted text
>
> At some point, the people who package the software need to make editorial
> decisions. Remove knobs. Provide people with stuff that just works.
> Remove options. Or definitely give them the means to do the trade-off
> correctly.
>
> Okay, it's a losing battle. I'm an old grumpy fart.
>
> Okay, a lot of IT people are just earning their wages by managing the
> incredibly too complex setups we face nowadays (and not screwing too badly
> in front of a multitude of stupide innane choices).
>
> Linux is the `culture of choice'. Provide ten MTA, ten MUA. Twenty window
> managers. Never decide which one you want to install, never give you a
> default installation that just works. Cater to the techy, nerdy culture
> of people who want to spend *days* just making choices.

Wrong. Unix is the "culture of choice", and that includes Linux and
OpenBSD. It's been the same ever since Berkely includled csh. That, by
the way, is why YOU have the option to run OpenBSD, and others have
the option to run Linux.

quoted text
>
> We try not to be as bad, to provide default configs that work, and not
> so many choices.
>
>

I was happy with the choices in Linux ten years ago. Some still aren't
happy with it. That's the nature of people these days. If you want to
try to change their behaviour you have to provide for them in the
meantime.


Jeff
-- 
Q: What will happen in the Aftermath?

A: Impossible to tell, since we're still in the Beforemath.

http://latedeveloper.org.uk