[geeks] Needed: A good sparc workstation

[Mike Meredith]

On Sun, 8 Mar 2009 20:56:40 +0200, gsm at mendelson.com wrote:
> I hope this was sarcasm. I've known people who had surgery for RSI
> back when it was called "carpal tunnel syndrome", from typing. It

Mice can cause RSI too if improperly used. RSI is not an argument for
or against the use of gui tools for administrating a server; it is an
argument for getting proper tools for the job. 

> IMHO they suck. If you are not careful, you can end up installing
> hundreds of packages and uninstalling one or two critical ones, lost

I personally use apt-get to install packages with Ubuntu and with that
it may or may not pull in dozens of packages but it certainly doesn't
scroll past without an option to review and approve.

> YUM was much better, I wonder if it works with Ubuntu?

I don't know, but if it did I doubt it would solve the dependencies
issues with Ubuntu that sometimes (very rarely) cause critical packages
to be removed.

> No, what I said was that it was much easier to admin Ubuntu using a
> GUI, it was set up with that in mind. The tools are there, they work
> and I can easily remote into the machine, so why not use them? Do you
> have something against doing things the easy way?

Well yes I do. Not as it happens with the case in hand ... a personal
server. But in general definitely.

GUI tools are _too_ easy --- it is possible to perform a task quickly
in a GUI that should be done slowly and carefully to give you the
chance to unconsciously think "is this sensible?". And I'm thinking of
more than one specific example when I say that.

It also is much harder to resort to the command line when you _need_ to
and to use the command line for automation if you use a GUI all the
time.

A graphical tool that allowed you to see what the command line would
have been would be exceptionally useful (AIX's smit).

> The only problem I have had is that GNOME won't work properly with a
> remote X window, (nor VNC for that matter), and although it's been

I must admit I'm curious about this. I don't use the GNOME window
manager itself but plenty of GNOMish graphical stuff, and I've been
using XDMCP to connect to my workstation at work for quite a few months
now.

> The first time I used an AIX system (1992) it already had was at the
> point where you could had to use the GUI tool, although some of it
> was available in curses mode on a text terminal. 

Really? I still use an AIX system at work, and I've never found
something that the GUI tool would do that the command line couldn't
also do. In fact smit allows you to see what it _would_ do rather than
just do it.

Of course I probably haven't done enough with AIX to touch those things
that only the GUI tools will do.



-- 
Mike Meredith (http://zonky.org/)
 the idea of God implies the abdication of human reason and justice; it
 is the most decisive negation of human liberty, and necessarily ends in
 the enslavement of mankind, in theory and practice.
  -- Mikhail Bakunin