Date: Tue, 16 Jun 1998 00:42:34 -0700 From: "Jordan K. Hubbard" <jkh@time.cdrom.com> To: Jay Nelson <jdn@acp.qiv.com> Cc: Sue Blake <sue@welearn.com.au>, ben@rosengart.com, Darren Reed <avalon@coombs.anu.edu.au>, hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: 2.2.6 CD-ROM : Package dependencies up the creek ? Message-ID: <4550.897982954@time.cdrom.com> In-Reply-To: Your message of "Mon, 15 Jun 1998 21:43:43 CDT." <Pine.BSF.3.96.980615194034.1224A-100000@acp.qiv.com>
next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
> I'm more concerned about the clamor to make FreeBSD newbie friendly. I > don't think Unix, of any flavor, is appropriate for a newbie who > hasn't paid their dues and earned a basic understanding of the dirty Erm, now I'm going to have to jump in on the other side of the argument. :-) Arguing that Unix shouldn't be user-friendly or that an expert-only FreeBSD could be good or desirable is an argument you're only doomed to lose since it's ultimately the users who will determine the size and shape of this OS, and it's the natural tendency of every user to want to make repetetive or complex tasks easier. Saying that it's somehow "wrong" to evolve the system along these lines is like saying that we should all still be relying on horses for transportation because automobiles pollute the air. Don't confuse flaws in the implementation for flaws in the ideal. :-) FreeBSD *will* evolve, and user-friendliness is just one of the many directions in which we'll see changes made. If those changes are well thought-out and do not _supplant_ existing features of the system, then we will have the best of all possible worlds, something which Win95 can never have since there's nothing worth-while under the hood, so to speak. If such evolution comes without careful thought and design then of course we'll be a lot worse off, but are changes to the VM system or device drivers any different in that respect? A well done UI "front end farm" which leverages off of existing tools and provides easy configuration for a wide variety of system services would be more than possible without seeking to replace "the old ways" in any way (visualize multiple roads to Rome rather than one road replacing another :). If most attempts to provide decent front-ends to all these various tasks in Unix have been rather unsuccessful, I think it's largely because the designers didn't approach the problem with the same zest that they may have approached, say, the task of writing the ultimate ethernet card driver or a 3D game. It's just not really all that "cool" to write user front-ends and, to really do it right, you have to be seriously into the idea of designing a comprehensive and highly extensible framework from the ground up. You also need to be very much in-touch with what the users are really asking for vs what you think it might be fun to design (though, hopefully, the two ideas are not entirely mutually exclusive :) and you need to have a fairly good grasp of human factors and good UI design, knowing just which parts of Unix make good front-end targets and which ones simply _don't_. You also say you don't like /usr/local/etc/rc.d, for example, but don't indicate a better way that add-on packages for FreeBSD (and there are now well over 1,000 of them) can add themselves to the startup sequence, if necessary. The need is there and it's not even hard to imagine a point in time where even the most Exalted Guru had a very hard time keeping his /etc/rc.local file up to date if it's your suggestion that everything simply be tossed in there, "the old way." Evolution will have its way, and the only item open to question is whether its progress is deliberate or simply left to chance. :-) - Jordan To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message
Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?4550.897982954>