Changing IP Addresses

[Brian Densmore]

<warning: may contain rantings>

> From: JD Runyan 
> 
> On Mon, Feb ,  at 11:46:23AM -0600, Joshua Bergland wrote:
> > There are definitely at least two camps in the Linux world, 
> > those that 
> ...
>   You can have distributions that suit both camps of people.
> > I just don't buy the argument that making Linux user friendly will 
> > hinder the OS. 
> ...
> Tell me how you will create a user-friendly OS that still 
> allows granular 
> level configuration.  
The way I see it. The OS is independent of whether you are /usr/friendly
or not. The GUI is just an application layer on top of the OS.

You have to keep the *nix structure in mind.

   ______________
  |  __________  |
  | |  ______  | |
  | | |kernel| | |
  | | |______| | |
  | |  shell   | |
  | |__________| |
  | Applications |
  |______________|

> When you change something manually, you 
> may have a 
> different style than the configuration application.  Your 
> style may hinder
> that app from understanding the configuration. 
If a user is manually configuring, he/she wouldn't likely be using
a "tool" (aka configuration application). Also some configuration 
files are dangerous to maintain manually
(sendmail comes to mind, although I know I could - I won't).

I can understand the need/desire to manually configure a system, but
most
administrators I know have "tools" to maintain the systems. Because,
although 
they do use the command line and sometimes manually edit configuration
files,
they find maintaining a system gets to be a bit tedious to do manually.
Generally 
speaking, if it is something you are going to do more that a few times,
it is more 
effective to have a "tool".

I believe a GUI and configuration applications are very important, but
shouldn't be
"forced" down anyone's throat. Like Mandrake does with linuxconf.
Although it can be shut 
off. If you don't like them then you should be able to not install them.

<rant>
No, I can't see how making Linux /usr/friendly can hurt it. I of course
would love to 
have all the spare time to manually configure every little piece of
Linux. That would 
mean I could use that time to do something fun, like throw myself out of
an aircraft 
from 10,000 feet at 300 mph. I have enough to do without spending every
waking moment
configuring "dis dat an' de udder ding". 
</rant>

Brian