fedora 7

[kristian.hermansen-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w at public.gmane.org (Kristian Hermansen)]

On 6/3/07, David Kramer <david-8uUts6sDVDvs2Lz0fTdYFQ at public.gmane.org> wrote:
> That's just the thing.  There is no such thing as "standard command line
> admin tools".  Unless you call vi/emacs "standard command line admin
> tools".  Every distro has their own thing.  Fedora has system-config-*.
>    SUSE has YaST.  To this day, we still have different locations for

adding users, configuring interfaces, configuring nfs or samba can all
be done with the standard tools adduser/useradd, ifconfig, etc on any
distro.  And yes, you can also hack the configs manually, because
that's all those tools are really doing.

> major package's files between distros, and that's just silly and
> counterproductive.  Does your apache put the DocumentRoots in /srv or
> /var?  Is it called httpd, apache, or apache2?

It takes running a few different distros to realize where things go.
In RHEL/Fedora it would be /var/www/html whereas Debian/Ubuntu is it
just /var/www.

> Truth be told, *most* services I know well enough to just edit the
> config files by hand, which ain't bad for someone who just plays
> SysAdmin on TV, but I don't think I'll ever be able to do Samba or X or
> iptables configuration without a tool.

Samba is not that difficult.  And even so, Ubuntu offers a nice
template file so that you can just uncomment the values you want or
crib your own.  Then just do smbpasswd -a user, followed by
/etc/init.d/samba restart.  X is difficult by hand, but you can always
use Xorg -configure to auto-generate a base config for you.  In
Debian/Ubuntu, you can use dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg and go
through the curses dialog.  iptables is also not difficult, if you
have some experience, like anything.  And you can always read the man
page or /usr/share/doc.

> The main reasons I've heard are the vintage of the "server" packages,
> and lack of admin tools.  I don't have specifics past that, not having
> run Ubuntu of any flavor myself.  Since their "Software Catalogue" page
> lists about a dozen companies, but no actual software catalog, I can't
> currently verify this for myself.

vintage?  You mean out of date?  This is certainly not true of
Debian/Ubuntu, as the server and desktop packages utilize the same.
You can always search packages.ubuntu.com for more info...

> However, when the trickle-down economics happens (I get my new laptop
> next week, my kid gets my laptop a day or two later, I get her old
> beater Celeron 466 as a guinea pig), I will probably try out Ubuntu on
> that.  Of course the Ubuntu website also doesn't have a hardware
> requirements page (the release notes just mention 256MB of memory are
> needed), I have no idea whether that will be a usable install or not.

Try Xubuntu instead,  It has fewer requirements since it runs Xfce as
the default desktop.  Or you could install Ubuntu and replace Gnome
with fluxbox or blackbox...

> I would like to, but I just don't have another box to try it out on yet.
>   I don't have any reasons to dislike Ubuntu (other than defaulting to
> Gnome :) ), but I'll have limited time to get my laptop up and running.

Xfce, fluxbox, or blackbox...Linux gives you choices :-)
-- 
Kristian Hermansen

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