[geeks] Needed: A good sparc workstation

[Lionel Peterson]

On Mar 8, 2009, at 8:01 AM, Joshua Boyd <jdboyd at jdboyd.net> wrote:

> On Mar 8, 2009, at 4:17 AM, gsm at mendelson.com wrote:
>> I found that out recently when I upgrade my local server from a  
>> much enhanced
>> red hat 7.2 system to Ubuntu 8.04.2 LTS server. Lots of things were  
>> no longer included, and you could not IMHO do any meaningful  
>> maintainance.
>> I ended up installing so many packages that it would have been  
>> easier and
>> faster to install the regular one.
>> I also found that I could not do a lot of adminisration things  
>> without a gui, and this was a server with a 640x480 monchrome  
>> monitor. Luckily I
>> figured out how to connect to it using my Mac as an Xterminal.
>
> If you couldn't figure out how to do it without a GUI, you were  
> doing something wrong since a lot of people run Ubuntu 8.04 LTS on  
> completely headless systems (meaning serial console).

Joshua,

As I read your note it seems dismissive/border line insulting. I don't  
think you meant it that way, but that's how it reads.

Every few months on the Ubuntu server maillist there is a heated  
discussion on the very subject of including GUI tools in the server  
build, and though it never gains traction, it has staying power.

Yes, everything that needs to be done on a server can be done via  
serial console/terminal session, but it can be a lot of typing, and  
since GUI tools exist (and act sanely), why ignore them just to prove  
something can be done via command line.

The Windows Server 2008 community is starting to work with so-called  
'Core' installs, without GUI, and they bitch and moan like stuck pigs  
UNTIL they realize that remotemanagement tools work just fine - all  
they lost was the local GUI.

Lionel