Converting to Ubuntu

[Yu Meng Chong]

----- "Collins Richey" <crichey at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Sun, Jun 21, 2009 at 4:53 PM, Joel Hammer<joel at hammershome.com>
> wrote:
> > I shudder to think some idiot might try to get rid of old fashioned
> text configuration files
> > someday.
> 
> Some idiot did years ago. It's called SuSE.

Hey, what do you mean by that? ;) I use Yast2, but I still edit text configuration files! 

I think a lot of people get the impression that Yast2 is another attempt at "dumbing down" Linux. But Suse is aimed at a different audience. For businesses, there needs to be a standardized method for doing stuff and Yast2 provides that by restricting the number of choices available to a user/sysadmin. An example is configuring DHCP and Dynamic DNS. You could edit the configuration files by hand, but you could get very different configurations depending on the proficiency of the sysadmin. With Yast2, you can only configure it a few ways, so documentation and troubleshooting are easier.

Of course some people will say that I am plugging Suse because I am a Novell reseller -- and that's partly true! But, for me, it is really easier to sell a SuSE solution than, say, a CentOS/RH solution because you know that there are a finite and very limited number of ways that the user can screw up. The tougher stuff, like Samba or Apache configuration, I do by hand rather than use Yast2, but that is also because I know that the client's sysadmin probably won't want to get his/her hands dirty with that.

pascal chong