[olug] linux web server management ?

[Aaron W DeLashmutt]

Not to start a big bashing fest or anything... but;
I think solutions such as apt get, urpmi, and portage are horrible ideas
for newbies.  Why are you even using linux in the first place if all you
are looking for is ease of use.  There is a such thing as EASY, its
called windows XP.
No problem being a noob, everyone has to start somewhere... but read the
docs, howtos, everything available.  Almost all information is
available, including dependencies.
You aren't going to learn anything using tools like apt-get except how
to bitch when you can't get something to work... or when a needed
'debian package' isn't available.

These are the reasons the acronym RTFM has become so widely known.

-Aaron DeLashmutt

ps.  After this email, Im going to get my warm fuzzy feeling using
'Windows Update' to update my libraries and secure my box.

-----Original Message-----
From: Brian Wiese [mailto:bwiese at cotse.com] 
Sent: Wednesday, December 18, 2002 4:08 PM
To: Aaron
Subject: Fw: Re: [olug] linux web server management ?

hahahahah, yeah. my point Exactly!!!

Begin forwarded message:

Date: Wed, 18 Dec 2002 09:29:18 -0600 (CST)
From: "William E. Kempf" <wekempf at cox.net>
To: <olug at olug.org>
Subject: Re: [olug] linux web server management ?



Jonathan Warren said:
> With linux it is easy to install software.

No, I'd have to disagree.

>  You just need to copy the
> package or source files to the server and either install them with the
> command line package tool or build them and install them.

You forgot about dealing with dependencies here!

>  For Redhat
> you would do the following rpm -i newpkg.rpm.  It will report any
errors
> or problems or missing packages.

Yeah, now you get to track down the missing packages, repeat this
process,
track down the missing packages for those packages...

And I've not even mentioned how difficult it can be to track down those
other dependencies, even with rpmfind.net.


>  Most source distributions can be
> installed by tar -zxvf source.tgz or tar -jxvf source.tar.bz2  cd
source
> ./configure

And again, track down dependencies, repeat this process ad. nauseum.

> make
> make install

I get the feeling that some folks on here don't care for my criticizing
Linux, but the criticism is often warranted and can do nothing but
motivate people to find solutions to the problems.  In this case, there
are few solutions available.  Debian has apt.  Gentoo has portage. 
Mandrake has urpmi.  There's a port of apt for RPM based distros
(apt-rpm)
which may help, provided you can find a good apt-rpm based repository
for
your distro (the only one I could find was for RedHat).

Since switching to Mandrake and using urpmi I find installations to be
MUCH easier.  The only problem is that, once installed, most packages
require some configuration as well, and said configurations are often
arcane and difficult to learn.  The end result has been that most
installations for me still take most of a full day (some even longer,
unfortunately).  At least once I've learned how to deal with a package
I've got the knowledge and notes to repeat the installation in a matter
of
minutes... but the point is that things don't have to be this difficult
for "newbies" (and I mean newbies to a given package, not newbies to
Linux... though the latter confounds the problems).  This is one area
that
I think the Linux world really needs to start focusing their attention.

William E. Kempf



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  Brian Wiese | bwiese at cotse.com | aim: unolinuxguru
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