In article <1992Aug8.115906.20552@klaava.Helsinki.FI>, wirzeniu@klaava.Helsinki.FI (Lars Wirzenius) writes:

| Good point, but I think we can build something that works on top of the
| standard Unix way and is just an insulating layer for people who don't
| want to learn the nitty gritty things.

  As someone who administers SCO ODT and Xenix, HP-UX, SunOS, Dell V.4,
and Linux, let me tell you that there is no way in the world a "standard
UNIX way" of doing system administration. As I pointed out in my posting
last week, I like the V.3/V.4 run levels with rc directories for each
level, but beyond having the concept, no two vendors do it the same way.

| >Hm. If there are many parallel versions, then there will certanly be
| >problems trying to merge different features to one kernel. It can lead
| >to frustration and boredom. Just my 0.02 FMk worth.
| 
| Yup, and that's what we more or less have now.  Hackers seem to like it,
| and even prefer it, though.  Ordinary users definitely don't.

  I would like to see people put some effort into packaging the
software, so I could, for instance, grab a 'ps' package and just compile
it and run. I'm willing to compile for every new kernel, I'm less
willing to grab headers from some other package, diddle a bunch of
s_links which seem to change between versions, etc.

| The trouble is that ordinary users don't want to collect a large number
| of packages to only get the operating system.  They want to get one
| package, install that, and have all the basic stuff working.  Then they
| will go and get a couple of more packages, each of which contains an
| application (or something similar), install those, and start working. 
| It would probably even be preferable if some applications were part of
| the basic package.  (It of course needs to be possible to install only a
| subset of the basic package, and to leave out device drivers etc that
| aren't necessary.)

  True, although a directory of what files are where and what's really
in them would be a big help. Just a list of what kernels work with what
packages would be great. With a comment like "must ps -U to run" or
"works, but must recompile with new kernel includes," or something like
that. 

| One thing that has struck me is that my vision of an "ordinary user's
| Linux" is somewhat similar to the way Dell's Unix is represented on the
| net.  Dell has taken the basic SVR4 and made it easy to install and
| administer and also added all the freeware they have found, and made
| that as easy to install.  It would be great if we could get something
| similar for Linux, i.e. one system which has _everything_ one could ever
| dream about in a basic system.  (I don't know if Dell actually is like
| this, I've never even seen it.)

  Dell is so complete it's hard to believe. It configures itself, for
instance, instead or patching int numbers and buffer addresses in
obscure tables (most unix), or running a script (SCO mkdev, etc), it
goes out and looks to see what it can find. When I installed on a
server it came up and found: an ESDI hard disk on WD compatible
controller, a 150MB tape drive on AHA1542 compatible controller, two
floppies on the motherboard, a WD8013 compatible net card, and a
non-standard VGA card operating in text mode only. It found all the
ints, i/o addresses, and transfer buffer addresses by itself.

  When I got the first alpha test release some years ago, I thought
they had just dumped some hacker's machine, because of all the PD
software and stuff. But no, they really include all that stuff with the
package, including touches like gcc 1.4 and 2.2 both, perl, C news,
etc. And of course DOSmerge, slip, and both motif and Openlook. For $995.

-- 
bill davidsen, GE Corp. R&D Center; Box 8; Schenectady NY 12345
    I admit that when I was in school I wrote COBOL. But I didn't compile.