On Tue, Sep 13, 2011 at 4:55 AM, Jeffrey Walton <noloa...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi Sturat,
>
> On Mon, Sep 12, 2011 at 3:58 PM, Stuart Henderson <s...@spacehopper.org>
> wrote:
>> On 2011-09-12, Jeffrey Walton <noloa...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>> Otherwise, if pkg_add is the 'installer', then the tool or process is
>>> broken. In the later case - as a dumb user - I don't consider required
>>> configuration changes 'knob turning'.
>>
>> pkg_add is a package installer, not a configuration editor. B By policy
>> OpenBSD doesn't second-guess your intentions and reconfigure your system
>> just because you've installed a package.
> I think my confusion lies in the [overloaded] meaning of 'install';
> and my presumption that one who wants to install a package really
> wants it configured and ready for use. I did not realize there were
> folks who want to install software, but don't want it configured (and
> don't want to use it).
There are folks which want software installed, but don't want it
configured with ugly and/or stupid defaults decided by someone
another.
>
> Perhaps Item 15 of the FAQ could differentiate the meaning of
> 'install' more succinctly? ('How to install' was one of the first
> topics I researched, and 15.2.4 was the first items I visited).
>
>> Applications for Microsoft OS often *do* do this; the result: the
> Don't forget the Mac OS X installer, Debian and friends via apt-get,
> and Fedora with yum (I don't work with BlackBerry and Android enough
> to speak about their process). As far as I am aware, all perform an
> installation with appropriate configuration changes.
Really appropriate??
Take for example some pdf viewer. In OpenBSD you can choose during
install if you want plain version or cups version, but if you choose
cups version it's not enabled automatically and that's correct because
only you as a user/admin of that particular computer knows how you
want to be that sw configured and enabled. In Linux you install couple
of packages and you will end with cups, samba, avahi and a lot of
unexpected and unwanted servers/apps runnig. You're not informed about
that and if you can't read enough quick you will not notice that
during install as well. So in the end you have computer full of
unneeded SW which is enabled, you don't know about that, mostly it has
some bugs so your security is lower or even zero.
Guess why Windows, MacOS X, Linux have so much security issues and
bugs. It's not only about design. Part of that is how "appropriate" is
their install of packages.
>
>> There are plenty of OS geared towards, to use your words, a "dumb user";
>> OpenBSD is not one. (actually I would change this to "inexperienced admin"
>> as it's quite possible for a system administrator to set things up for a
>> non-technical user, as happens all the time in the commercial software
>> world but also demonstrated nicely in the 'Puffy In The Corporate
Aquarium'
>> article in bsdmag/undeadly).
> Don't worry - I don't take offense to being a 'dumb user'. Half the
> time its all that I really am, and the other half its all I really
> want to be. If I'm spending time researching how to administer a
> system, I'm not working on my primary task.
There are people for that. They are called sysadmins and you have
couple of choices.
1) Pay them so you can focus on your primary task
2) Have some of your friends for that for free or barter exchange of
stuff or whatever
3) Become one of them to be able to maintain your PC, improve
knowledge and maybe even bring something to your primary work
4) Worst case scenario - don't learn it, don't pay anyone, just build
it somewhat and use it. Internet is full of similar machines which
just brings more to the numbers of spam and other crap
>
> I kind of exist in a middle ground - I only need to compile a library
> and run test cases to make sure the software is OpenBSD compatible. I
> don't want to be an administrator or a user. Please don't take offense
> as its not meant to be an insult.
Correct test cases and interpretation of its results are only possible
when you know platform used very well ;-) Without that you just think
that they are correct/wrong. It's called guessing and not QA.
Probably no one here is taking that as insult (including me), but you
must know that even as computers are somewhat called consumer devices
it did not change their status of complex systems. Including operating
systems which are really complex. Sure you can take anyone for
developer, admin or whatever because it's so "easy" today. The
question is what results you will have in the end.
I'm curious why it's so much visible in IT and not eg. in cars
industry, space shuttles, jet fighters and so on. Why I can't see
people complaining that driving car needs learning how to drive or
that space shuttle is useless for users without Unity on its HUD
displays (:D) or that all of that anti-G, school, physics, mathematics
and so on is too much for normal users to flight jet fighter. All of
that requires a lot of knowledge, learning and involvement and mostly
people are OK about that, but when something to IT related ... voila
everything MUST be easy or as in other system because without that
it's useless.
>
> For what its worth, I needed to fetch some info from the web, so
> installed Firefox. Unfortunately, Firefox crashed constantly under the
> default window manager (FVVM?), so I moved to Gnome to try and
> stabilize the system.
Which OpenBSD, which Firefox, which packages installed, which HW
http://www.openbsd.org/report.html
>
>>> http://xkcd.com/342/. B B B B B B B B B ,
>> 349, surely? :)
> Most certainly!
>
> Jeff
