On 03/08/2015 08:59 PM, Chris Murphy wrote:
On Sun, Mar 8, 2015 at 6:16 PM, Anton Aylward <opensuse@antonaylward.com> wrote:
The fact is that what gets 'maintained' is the capability to configure. Yes a default is there in the 'template' when you create a user account. But you can alter that template. The idea of being forced to have a specific panel with specific icons & widgets and not being able to customise is abhorrent. Not even Windows users would put up with that!
Well, they actually do put up with essentially zero customization in their installer. OS X's installer is literally no customization at all. Both Windows and OS X installers are basic point and shoot installers, and as a result have no bugs or support calls.
If we are are restricting things to ONLY the installer then I'm not sure you have a meaningful point, simply because there are a class of systems & machines where they are delivered with the system already installed: Windows, phones, tablets. Apple is the ultimate lock in since they control the hardware and the software. I've not experience with W/8 or W/10 but installing Windows from the first release though to W/7 was always more complicated than any late model Linux. Many people have commented on this. The OTHER issue you're committing from all this is that many of the people installing Linux are doing so on customized hardware that they've put together. Traditionally MS-DOS and Windows dealt with just one file system and made upgrades a real bastard. It was usually get new hardware with the new OS installed. You needed a lot of technical - and Windows specific - know-how to do an in-place upgrade. And then had to manually install upgrades to all the basic office apps and so on. The decision tree to install Linux with separate file systems for /home, /tmp and so on isn't that difficult. The real point is that you CAN do it. Or, as I say, choose not to.
You would not put up with the idea that all houses/home have to have the same rooms with the same furniture in the same position, would you?
Specious analogy. Rooms and furniture are discoverable things, you don't have to learn how to use them just because they're different sizes and shapes.
That's a joke, right? A house, furniture, carpets, is a lot more maintenance effort than a computer! As for the decision tree with installing, the choice is amazing! Visit even the most limited of showrooms such as Sears, never mind one of the strips in some business districts where there are back-to-back-to-back furniture showrooms. Yes, if you're a geek you can outfit the house in basic Ikea or basic Furniture Crate and not worry about details. But give your mother or wife the opportunity to completely redecorate/outfit a new house and see what happens! As for the 'learn': again that depends on much. Just as there are people who format their MS-Word documents by refusing to learn about styles and do everything with tabs and spacing (and people writing html that way too!) you can do the same with furniture. Not only matters of adjustable shelves, but of levellers and in many "hidden" drawers or storage. Again, you might not find this in the Ikea-for-the-masses and only in the more upmarket. Perhaps the thing about UNIX/Linux is that it is less 'sui generis' than previous OS. This http://www.zdnet.com/article/why-many-mcses-wont-learn-linux/ is the populist front of a point that has been discussed for decades: *NIX is about learning and apply basic principles. It seems that is going out of fashion, according to what you say. Perhaps the GUI and things like GUI installers are part of that 'going away'.
That's not the case with Linux OS installers doing things differently. Compare the default openSUSE Btrfs install layout to Fedora's? Completely different. It's more different than mobile home vs mansion; it's more like refrigerator vs lawnmower. OK both have motors... hmm.
Again you miss the point. The reason the OS installers differ is because the bulk of the system, the kernel, the applications, are all Open Source. Anyone can download them and it only takes a modicum of technical knowledge to compile them. Things like the Build Service makes it even easier since you don't even have to download the sources. The installers are part of the "value add", just one part, that allows the various vendors to differentiate. Personally I think obsession about installers is a bit irrelevant. In the Days Of Old magazines like Dr Dobbs would have reviews of development tools and compilers. On the assumption that programmers did a write-compile-test-edit-compile-test-edit-compile cycle the issue was the fastest compiler got the best rating. Not what could deliver the fasted end code to the customer. Today, reviewers obsess about the installers. Unless your job is installing, in which case there are tools for automating that so you don't have to deal with the GUI, its something you do once, compared with you every day job, using mailers, browsers, word processors, spread sheets. The house/furniture analogy again: you buy a house occasionally but live in it every day. You buy the bed, sofa, chair, cooker, fridge once in a while but use them every day. You may put a lot of effort into choosing the house, etc, all the way down to your clothes (unless as I say, you are geek who don't pay attention to any of this, nor to such matters as diet or personal hygiene).
I'm not sure there is an analogy here other than the phone is running a version of Linux. Cyanogen is a option you've taken, or it is for most phones; IIR there's only the 1+1 that has it as stock.
The point is, I don't have choice in the layout, but I still had the choice to replace the bloated ATT Android that was on it with Cyanogen.
I think you are making my point here. The crapware is how the marketing idiots at places like ATT or Leveno(!) see as adding value. Idiots! But what can you expect from such institutional marketing? You CHOSE to replace the pre-installed system with cyanogen. You had no more involvement of the decision tree of the original installation than f you'd bought a Windows system or from Best Buy or a MacBook from the Apple Store. Further, you needed a non-trivial technical know-how and skill to do the cyanogen install. I've looked at instructions for the same and decided that its too much effort, but then my service provider only texts me an "promotional offer" once every couple of months and I bought an unlocked phone so I could deal with one of the 'independents'. You'll notice that I made choices there. Just like I could have chosen to buy/use a Windows system from Best Buy and all the crapware, bloat-ware and malware, virus susceptibility and so forth.
The partition stuff was a non-factor, I didn't even notice that layout until months later and only because I got curious and went looking for it. Ergo, when partitioning, LVM, Btrfs, whatever, just become basic infrastructure, the user doesn't even have to be bothered with such things.
The last time I installed Suse, 12.1, just after it asked me what language I wanted and what timezone I'm in, I was offered a 'automatic' install. Just for kicks I tried it. I later wiped and customized it, but that branch of the decision tree frightened me because I considered all those defaults too idiotic. What if I actually had a pile of disks instead of just the one and wanted RAID or even just mirroring? Then I thought back to when I'd sat in one the installation of a large AIX system. There was a LOT of paperwork decision making up front about the wall-to-wall RAID in the back room, the HVAC, the 3-phase that had to be installed; how the RAID was to be stacked, how backups and other provisioning was to be done. But the doing of all this was in the hands of IBM. The issue you seem unhappy with is that with Linux/suse that gets downloaded onto DVD for the end user to install himself, this decision tree is viable and on-the-fly. There are no worksheets as there was for that AIX installation. Your second point of dispute seems to be that if the company I was working at had chosen another vendor it would have been different. Yes, that's true; on another occasion I PM'd the installation of a new raised floor system around a Sequent, with the disk array, the HVAC and Three phase and terminal server and wiring. Paperwork and forms up front but different ones from IBM. I'm sure others here can tell similar stories about SUN ... Whoever. So that Linux vendors try to differentiate themselves by offering different installers and different support, I'm not surprised.
But the linux desktop hasn't reached that level of standardization, either among distros, or often even different versions of the same distro, such things get changed and impact the user much more starkly than mobile devices which have done a better job of abstracting such "plumbing" concerns from the user.
You are missing a few issues here. First, there's the issue of differentiation. Second, the difference you speak of are really of no concern. Within any one market segment of the automobile market there are a number of vendors. The cars are all about the same size, about the same size and gross characteristics such as weight, seating, MPG vary little. Still, the vendors try to differentiate. Some of these things you have to uncover and learn, but the basic principles of driving these different cars is really a non issue. The same might hold for driving in different countries. Yes there are different protocols. In New York I have to remember that there is no no right turn on red allowed as there is here in Ontario. In France I have to remember the protocols for dealing with roundabouts is different from the protocol for roundabouts in the UK. I have to remember that my father's 5-speed Citroen is different from my cousin's four speed Ford and nether have the ride or lazy cornering of my automatic Buick. But I can drive any of them. More to the point so can my father and my cousin. So too, I've sat down at other people's desks and their desktops & GUIs configured all manner of ways: E16, Gnome, LXDE with Linux; ${DEITY} knows what with SUNOS/Solaris ("Open Look"???); I got dumped on an AIX Frame and PSSP - which I'd never heard of before - and picked it up, just more 'patterns' of the same old same old built around Kerberos and Perl. PATTERNS.
I think this is a bad example, because why would anyone design something like this? Btrfs can't snapshot other filesystems unless those filesystems are inside a file on Btrfs. That's asking for all sorts of pathological behavior, and hence pointless.
Perhaps there's a terminological problem problem here. If the whole system is just one BtrFS then there are no other file systems. If you' are asking to put a XFS or ReiserFS _inside_ a BtrFS then ... HOW? It doesn't make sense? There may be a kind of analogy between BtrFS and LVM but I think that's specious. I think the spindle spanning capability of BtrFS is better compared to that of ReiserFS. That BtrFS can't snapshot other file systems, any arbitrary file system, I don't see as a problem.
Whether it is on your system is entirely up to you. You too can *choose* for it not to be so.
Choice without knowledge makes choice a coin toss. In order to make a meaningful choice requires knowledge.
I have no argument with statement. Sadly, we succumb to GUIs that try to embed such knowledge and really they are not 'expert systems' so much as the view of the programmer who put it together. Its one reason I prefer to use the command line for so many functions.
Yep, it's a trust problem. Sometimes the GUI will lie for expediency rather than creative convenience, and users end up with completely the wrong understanding of how things work.
Its why many of us favour command lines. or perhaps simply GUI builder tools like Tk on Perl or Tk on Python, so that we can have them do what we want. <quote src="My database of dot sig quotes"> That's what I love about GUIs: They make simple tasks easier, and complex tasks impossible. -- John William Chambless </quote> In the limiting case there is the installer. But then again, there is "autoyast". In a very real sense autoyast can make the installation as trivial and idiot system as and 'all in one' remvng 99.98% of the decision tree. I'm still of the opinion that the user needs to be asked his timezone and account name and password. Years ago the instant cake mix companies found that a slight user involvement, such as "add three eggs", promoted user acceptability because it gave the end user a feeling of involvement. There was absolutely no need for this, the package could contain everything. Just pour it into the pan and bake. But that little involvement had a huge psychological impact.
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-January/msg00861.html
The interesting this about that thread is that it walks a fine line between FOSS and the kind of formalisms about project management, scope definition and constraints, resource management and formal testing that one might associate with the traditional software development industry such as the old IBM, the old Oracle, the late 1990s Microsoft. No-one actually comes out and says that more formalism is needed, but it's there in the subtext.
There is something of a check and balance in FOSS, compared to the (hopefully) "benevolent" dictator model e.g. Apple, Google, Microsoft, IBM, etc. (i.e. here's our offering, take it or leave it, and all of our developers toe company party line). The distribution is actually limited by resources to what degree it can deviate from myriad upstreams. So getting a cohesive, integrated "OS" rather than a collection of packages, is really hard.
So too is differentiation and making FOSS into a profitable business model. -- A: Yes. > Q: Are you sure? >> A: Because it reverses the logical flow of conversation. >>> Q: Why is top posting frowned upon? -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org