Still No Usable GUI Really (Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on 2014-06-04 16:42 (#20P) Yes, I know that sounds like BS from a bygone day, but as a mostly-Windows geek, every time I dive deeper into Linux, on desktop or server, I'm struck by the eventual need to go to the command line / terminal.That's okay, for me -- I LIKE the command line and spend a fair amount of time there in Windows -- but reports to the contrary I don't see a way for a moderately technical user to avoid it under Linux. Far too many things are still VERY much dependent upon it, from daemons to drivers to fixes to patches to scheduling to startup etc. When something really goes wrong, you know the answer will not lie anywhere in the realm of the available GUI.Sure, theoretically a user can steer apt-get or yum shells via a GUI, and can open up config files when necessary in a GUI editor, but who are we kidding? There's just no way you can live entirely in the GUI in Linux as you can in Windows, for technical or (to a lesser degree) non-technical users.On the server side of course it's FAR worse. Using something like WebMin one inevitably ends up resorting to the command line fairly often.Sure, every OS is just a thin veneer over what's going on underneath, and GUIs more so, but that surface is still too thin and shatterable in Linux distributions and desktops. My favorite desktop is KDE, and many distros shun it! Re: Still No Usable GUI Really (Score: 2, Informative) by billshooterofbul@pipedot.org on 2014-06-09 11:34 (#219) Wow, I was kind of with you, until you suggusted servers should have guis.I mean, maybe your right about moderate tech users not being able to do everything on a desktop via gui. I would suggust they were better off learning bash & related tools if they are going to call themselves moderately technical.BUT NO GUIS ON SERVERS!!!! Re: Still No Usable GUI Really (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on 2014-06-09 17:10 (#21A) I appreciate your thoughts, but I turned to WebMin/VirtualMin precisely because I don't spend enough time in Linux to be completely comfortable managing every server application at the terminal, even though I am otherwise aware of general administrative needs and procedures. The hope was that it would help me manage Postfix, sendmail, LDAP, user management, various webmail daemons, Apache, SpamAssassin, WordPress, SSL Certificate management, etc., without having to remember or cheat sheet everything. To an extent it does that, but very imperfectly. Without it, there's a huge nut to crack, as evidenced by a ridiculously long primer on setting up a personal mail server that Ars Technica recently featured.There's no real reason a Linux mail server should be an order of magnitude more difficult to administer than an Exchange server. But without VirtualMin or something like it, it is. (There's a damn good reason that CPanel gets away with charging as much as it does.)I don't particularly care if I lose massive geek points saying it and trying to rely on the server side tools, but I'm quite sure there are others like me who are otherwise competent but don't yet have the shell wizardry to go bareback.Again, thanks for the feedback.
Re: Still No Usable GUI Really (Score: 2, Informative) by billshooterofbul@pipedot.org on 2014-06-09 11:34 (#219) Wow, I was kind of with you, until you suggusted servers should have guis.I mean, maybe your right about moderate tech users not being able to do everything on a desktop via gui. I would suggust they were better off learning bash & related tools if they are going to call themselves moderately technical.BUT NO GUIS ON SERVERS!!!! Re: Still No Usable GUI Really (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on 2014-06-09 17:10 (#21A) I appreciate your thoughts, but I turned to WebMin/VirtualMin precisely because I don't spend enough time in Linux to be completely comfortable managing every server application at the terminal, even though I am otherwise aware of general administrative needs and procedures. The hope was that it would help me manage Postfix, sendmail, LDAP, user management, various webmail daemons, Apache, SpamAssassin, WordPress, SSL Certificate management, etc., without having to remember or cheat sheet everything. To an extent it does that, but very imperfectly. Without it, there's a huge nut to crack, as evidenced by a ridiculously long primer on setting up a personal mail server that Ars Technica recently featured.There's no real reason a Linux mail server should be an order of magnitude more difficult to administer than an Exchange server. But without VirtualMin or something like it, it is. (There's a damn good reason that CPanel gets away with charging as much as it does.)I don't particularly care if I lose massive geek points saying it and trying to rely on the server side tools, but I'm quite sure there are others like me who are otherwise competent but don't yet have the shell wizardry to go bareback.Again, thanks for the feedback.
Re: Still No Usable GUI Really (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on 2014-06-09 17:10 (#21A) I appreciate your thoughts, but I turned to WebMin/VirtualMin precisely because I don't spend enough time in Linux to be completely comfortable managing every server application at the terminal, even though I am otherwise aware of general administrative needs and procedures. The hope was that it would help me manage Postfix, sendmail, LDAP, user management, various webmail daemons, Apache, SpamAssassin, WordPress, SSL Certificate management, etc., without having to remember or cheat sheet everything. To an extent it does that, but very imperfectly. Without it, there's a huge nut to crack, as evidenced by a ridiculously long primer on setting up a personal mail server that Ars Technica recently featured.There's no real reason a Linux mail server should be an order of magnitude more difficult to administer than an Exchange server. But without VirtualMin or something like it, it is. (There's a damn good reason that CPanel gets away with charging as much as it does.)I don't particularly care if I lose massive geek points saying it and trying to rely on the server side tools, but I'm quite sure there are others like me who are otherwise competent but don't yet have the shell wizardry to go bareback.Again, thanks for the feedback.