Re: CUPS in SuSE...
From: Nico Kadel-Garcia (nkadel_at_comcast.net)
Date: 01/18/05
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Date: Mon, 17 Jan 2005 20:18:39 -0500
"Chris Cox" <ccox_nopenotthis@airmail.net> wrote in message
news:csgrhe$cpb@library1.airnews.net...
> Nico Kadel-Garcia wrote:
> ...
>>
>> #1. YaST is not your friend.
>>
>> #2. What SuSE OS are you running?
>>
>> #3. SuSE thinks they can outsmart the configuration plans and tools of
>> the authors of every package in the world and bend and break packages to
>> fit into YaST. Painful, but true.
>>
>> Can you use chkconfig to check the status of your CUPS related init
>> scripts and post the results, and make sure all of them are activated?
>
> I'd say that 99% of your constant/incessant whining about YaST is
> unfounded
> and another 99% of what you say in response about it is untrue.
Name 2 incorrect whines out of the last 10. Start with my complaints about
their fracturing of grub, if you dare, and then proceed to their DNS
handling, their kernel module loading, their re-arrangement of where
author's reasonably put things, their introduction of unnecessary layers of
middleware into major packages and flushing thereby of hand-edited changes
in grub, etc., etc.
> Just something I've noticed.
>
> Here are some facts. The "authors of every package in the world" think
> they know how to do administration "correctly" and in almost EVERY case,
> they
> do their administration DIFFERENTLY. YaST is an attempt at unifying
> the mess caused by the high-ego centric world of developers who are more
> interested in building an empire than something that integrates well
> with other pieces of software.
It's a monolithic to fit a bunch of hand-crafted tools into a single size
space on the wall. Never mind that you re-arrange the internals of dozens of
different core services without the author's knowledge so that the author's
own notes are wrong. Never mind that you make it difficult to recompile from
source to generate your own RPM's because of the layers of middle ware
necessary to incorporate it into that monolithic tool, YaST. Just break
everyone else's tools for your convenience.
The YaST designers are in direct violation of every single one of Eric
Raymond's suggested rules for Linux GUI design at
http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/cups-horror.html. Several of the rules he
added later are ones I sent to him/. Eric's rules are:
So, if you are out there writing GUI apps for Linux or BSD or whatever, here
are some questions you need to be asking yourself:
1.. What does my software look like to a non-technical user who has never
seen it before?
2.. Is there any screen in my GUI that is a dead end, without giving
guidance further into the system?
3.. The requirement that end-users read documentation is a sign of UI
design failure. Is my UI design a failure?
4.. For technical tasks that do require documentation, do they fail to
mention critical defaults?
5.. Does my project welcome and respond to usability feedback from
non-expert users?
6.. And, most importantly of all...do I allow my users the precious luxury
of ignorance?
The ones I suggested, and which he listed on the same page, are:
* Can you gracefully and easily duplicate your tools and configuration
for a similar installation? Is it documented? (RedHat and CUPS is no help
with this, either, most of the print-drivers wend their way from the
foomatic and other tools into the CUPS setups without a lot of hint of how
it works.) [For cups, the answer is "you can duplicate it easily, but it's a
*secret*"! Every configuration should be built and recompiled from the
source tarball! What are you, a n00b?]
* Is installing this toolset likely to replace or break something
already in place (such as LPD based printing packages)? If so, explain how
to gracefully do the transition.
* Are there settings you can do from the command line or hand-editing
config files that cannot be done from the GUI? Are they documented anywhere?
Does using the GUI erase these settings? (The answer for CUPS is "Yes, you
can flush all sorts of hand-edited things this way!". This was an incredible
problem for NeXT stations and remains a big freeware GUI problem, although
most try harder to address this. Webmin is an excellent example of how to do
it right in most cases!)
* Are all your important features mentioned? The automatic flat
text->Postscript conversion is one such feature, and despite its presence in
the tarball tools and default use the CUPS claim it's not theirs and not
their problem.
> If you want to spend 90% of your time administrating everything by
> hand is a plethora of configuration files spread throughout the universe,
> then use Red Hat or some other distribution.
WRONG. They're scattered all over the universe anyway. YaST and SuSE rip out
bits of them and staple them into /etc/sysconfig, but fail to complete the
job and make upgrading or switching far more painful. Their attempt to
create a master GUI is one doomed to failure because you can't make a
monolithic master GUI for 20 different features and keep it integrated with
new software or all the available changes. RedHat tried this with Linuxconf
for years and threw in the towel years ago.
RedHat did something right here. They now use a dozen or so quite distinct
little "system-config-whatever" tools, each of which is suited to a specifi
task and can be upgraded to and integrated with that specific tasks
software. They're lightweight, they're modular, and they use the software's
built-in features and configuration files rather than trying to write their
own.
Webmin took a distinct but also effective approach. They simply created a
back-end framework for authenticating users, and use a light web interface
to allow authors and developers to write plug-in modules for specific tasks.
Have you tried writing a module for YaST, or changing the ones already
built-in? Heck, try even getting it to tell you what modules are available
or built-in!
> YaST is an amazing tools that attempts to do amazing things and yes...
> sometimes, it doesn't do things quite right due to the ever changing
> desires of developers with different ideas on what is "right".
Yes, it's amazingly. It's also badly broken in dozens of distinct little
details that make the life for developers that much harder to cope with.
> SUSE's is trying to create an environment that at least feels like
> it is consistent. If you don't like, grab something else.
I do when I can. I've got customers I can't name who use it for specific
reasons that make sense to them and to me, but I've pointed out the flaws to
them and warned them of the difficulties. They have different reasons for
using it, ranging from it being tested for specific software they require to
having in-house familiarity with it to demanding the long product life-cycle
that SuSE provides.
- Next message: Nico Kadel-Garcia: "Re: Need to install Windows 2000 from scratch to HDDs with Debian/Linux"
- Previous message: hbarta_at_gmail.com: "Re: Debian as a File Server to Win98"
- In reply to: Chris Cox: "Re: CUPS in SuSE..."
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