[geeks] I love it when software gets more efficient

[William Kirkland]

On Sep 13, 2006, at 08:06, geeks-request at sunhelp.org wrote:

> Message: 2
> Date: Wed, 13 Sep 2006 00:15:23 -0400
> From: Charles Shannon Hendrix <shannon at widomaker.com>
> Subject: Re: [geeks] I love it when software gets more efficient
> To: The Geeks List <geeks at sunhelp.org>
> Message-ID: <20060913041523.GA6935 at widomaker.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
>
> Sun, 10 Sep 2006 @ 11:33 -0700, William Kirkland said:
>
>> Since the unix world uses flat files to hold the configuration files,
>> you should be able to distribute a script to each node, which would
>> adjust the configuration file of all users. You could even provide it
>> as a wrapper to your browser executable.
>
> The problem here is that a lot of applications modify their
> configuration files constantly.

Users will typically find a way around any type of forced control, as  
will applications (well, their developers). As a system administrator  
you can only define what resources you will allow the user/ 
application/process to use, not how they will make use of them. Limit  
their memory, CPU, i/o ... help them use those resources efficiently,  
restrict their access to other's resources.

My point is that the capability exists in a unix environment (non- 
Micros**t). I am not even suggesting that this method is better than  
what Micros**t has done, to address this issue (the insecurities  
created by Micros**t's implementation are another issue), only that  
the capability exists.

... back to the original statement ...
 > It's also sad that we don't have a browser that integrates with your
 > desktop environment... and that the (non-Windows) desktop doesn't  
have a
 > way to support hard-coded network-wide settings...

One should not claim that they have "hard-coded network-wide  
settings" available when the OS is so tightly coupled with the  
applications that it is controlled by those applications (the OS is  
then insecure, and modifiable via those insecurities). This is no  
longer a feature, but a design flaw and security hole.

Micros**t's Windows is only better then their previous release.  
Unless you are more interested in controlling those pesky users who  
behave themselves, than you are in closing the backdoors. Only then  
can Microsoft be considered better than unix.

> It would be difficult to write distribute and merge code for so many
> different applications.

yep ... it's that merge code part, the distribution of configuration  
files is simple.

> This kind of thing really needs a standard.

The standard needs to be placed on the applications, not the OS. You  
will not be able to address the issue any other way. The unix world  
has provided the recommendation that the configuration files should  
be human readable text files (and less importantly named based upon  
the application, with a preceding dot and a suffix of "rc" and placed  
in the user's home directory, with a system default placed  
elsewhere). Applications *could* still choose to follow these  
suggestions.

> Of course, I think that will lead to bloat and hard-to-edit
> configuration files, performance and reliability issues, just like you
> have with Windows.
>
> KDE and Gnome are already pretty gross in the configuration file
> department:
>
> % whatfiles ~/.kde
> /home/shannon/.kde                 5640 files,      395 dirs,    
> 192068 K
>                        [local]        0 files,        0  
> dirs,        0 K
>                        [total]     5643 files,      399 dirs,    
> 192080 K
>
> About 1000 of those files are cached image data, but still...  
> that's one
> hell of a lot of metadata to try and manage globally.
>
> Of course, Gnome and KDE both pale in comparison to the massive  
> Windows
> registry, but it seems they are both well on their way.

No entity should be controlled by another, it is inefficient at best.

> It just seems like there has to be a better way.

No argument with that.

>> If designed and written correctly, unix users need only tweak their
>> environment, because their system admin has provided a good
>> configuration for their network-wide system.
>
> Applications at the very least need to do an automatic read and merge,
> starting with system configuration, and then merging in user
> configuration.

It's not too difficult to read a configuration file, from a system  
directory, setting configuration on the way. Then do it again, from  
an application directory and finely from the user's home directory.

> A step further would be hints in system config files that let the  
> admin
> control which settings an application let a user modify.

The user's will only complain to the application developers, who  
would then modify their code to allow the user to override the SA's  
"recommendations".

--
Bill.Kirkland at gmail.com