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Take This GUI and Shove It
snydeq writes "Deep End's Paul Venezia speaks out against the overemphasis on GUIs in today's admin tools, saying that GUIs are fine and necessary in many cases, but only after a complete CLI is in place, and that they cannot interfere with the use of the CLI, only complement it. Otherwise, the GUI simply makes easy things easy and hard things much harder. He writes, 'If you have to make significant, identical changes to a bunch of Linux servers, is it easier to log into them one-by-one and run through a GUI or text-menu tool, or write a quick shell script that hits each box and either makes the changes or simply pulls down a few new config files and restarts some services? And it's not just about conservation of effort — it's also about accuracy. If you write a script, you're certain that the changes made will be identical on each box. If you're doing them all by hand, you aren't.'"
Why should you? Under Linux you never have to change the PATH. The applications will be installed in pre-defined directories and the path is already set. It's only in Windows where you just install applications in random places and need to change the PATH in this horrible small dialog, plus you need to restart Windows to make it work.
In Linux it's just works, but if you really need to change the path you should be knowing what you do.
http://www.mueller-public.de - My site http://www.anr-institute.com/ - Advanced Natural Research Institute
Yes, yes it is.
Most people on slashdot who actually use Windows are mindlessly clinking to the clunker than is XP, so they really have no idea of what Microsoft has done in the last 10 years.
I am so damn tired of this kind of geek-cred bullshit. With today's computers, there's no good reason not to have a GUI. Unless, of course, you think girls will be impressed by your CLI skills.
> That's just because you haven't written a decent GUI for those options yet, it doesn't mean it couldn't be done if one wanted to.
Yes. It "could" be done. Certainly not by you though. Just who are you going to draft for this task?
THAT is the key. You can either wait for someone else to make a proper solution or make one of your own.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
...which is in itself generally too unstable for production use once you pass a few hundred users.
An n=1 counter is not going to disprove that argument, sorry pal.
Also, are you the guy who designed that system? I'd wager you're not. More than likely the guy who did really knew his shit, and was able to mitigate the weaknesses of OpenLDAP.
If you are the guy who did it, then my apologies. You're one lucky bastard.
Security is mostly a superstition... Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. - Helen Keller