[luau] Linuxconf's replacement in RH 7.3?

[R. Scott Belford]

WEBMIN.  No where near the simple elegance of linuxconf, but my "in 
between" friend will be webmin.  It has certainly helped me figure out 
what I didn't know to do on my debian box.  Hopefully the user shock 
will push redhat to replace linuxconf with something.

scott

On Monday, May 6, 2002, at 02:23 AM, Warren Togami wrote:

> Jeff Mings wrote:
>> I just checked a Rawhide mirror and noticed that linuxconf is still 
>> not there.  Anyone know if a unified cli-mode configuration tool has 
>> been selected to replace Linuxconf in RH 7.3?  We discussed this 
>> previously, but I keep hoping that something will show up for the 
>> command line.
>> -Jeff
>>
>
> There is none.  This is the single greatest thing that angers me about 
> Red Hat's latest distro.  The improvements in server services and 
> choices (via alternatives) in RH 7.3 make it better than ever, but Red 
> Hat seems to refuse to acknowledge that their configuration tools as a 
> whole are terrible.
>
> * There is no consistency between the CLI and GUI tools
> * The GUI tools themselves are fairly good, but some have no viable 
> equivalents in CLI... like user manager and networking.
> * The single greatest annoyance of the CLI tools are the network config 
> tools.  There is currently no way of setting a secondary DNS, and the 
> only way to configure IP aliases or interfaces other than eth0 is to 
> know about a hidden command line option for "netconfig".  You can't 
> choose or edit the network interface kernel driver either.
> * Yes I am aware of the configuration files, but this is too much to 
> expect from the average administrator that Red Hat hopes that they rely 
> entirely on up2date to keep maintain their servers.  Requiring them to 
> edit config files also scares the heck out of potential new 
> administrators.
> * While the CLI "setup" options are fairly well laid out, the 
> equivalent menus in GUI are somewhat haphazardly thrown together.  As a 
> result, the correct tool that you are looking for is somewhat difficult 
> to find.  I am talking about within both KDE and to a lesser degree 
> Gnome.
>
>
> What Red Hat really needs is something similar to DrakConf of the 
> latest Mandrake release.  THAT is what I feel is a powerful 
> configuration framework for several reasons.
>
> * Consistent interface and options between GUI and CLI.  All options 
> that exist in GUI also exist in CLI.
> * All options in once place, put into mostly reasonable categories. 
> Within DrakConf it is NOT difficult to find what you're looking for, 
> unlike Red Hat's configurators within KDE and to a lesser degree Gnome.
> * /var/log/explanations logs all changes made by DrakConf.  This is not 
> only useful to know about changes, but very beneficial for 
> administrators in learning the *real* way of configuring their systems.
>
>
> While I have a tremendous respect for Red Hat and I use exclusively Red 
> Hat servers and desktops, I have great worries about the ease of use, 
> functionality and organization of their configuration tools.  I do hope 
> that they follow the good example of DrakConf and address these issues 
> in near future for Red Hat 8.0.
>
> Heck, I'm willing to help code such a project if necessary.  I feel it 
> is that important, because it is one of the current greatest weaknesses 
> of the Red Hat distro.
>
> Warren Togami
> warren at togami.com
>
> _______________________________________________
> LUAU mailing list
> LUAU at videl.ics.hawaii.edu
> http://videl.ics.hawaii.edu/mailman/listinfo/luau
>