[NCLUG] Fedora 6 and the RaLink rt2500 wireless card

[Chad Perrin]

On Mon, Dec 11, 2006 at 12:41:21PM -0700, Stephen Warren wrote:
> Chad Perrin wrote:
> > There's always ifconfig (which can be used to change network
> > configuration as well as to dump configuration to STDOUT).  More to the
> > point, however, the configuration file is fairly standardized and easy
> > to read and understand.  Thus, you can just edit the network
> > configuration directly without having to go through several separate
> > files in several different directories.  Even better, there are manpages
> > in Debian at least for the format of various configuration files, so you
> > don't have to rely on configuration scripts or find some hoary old
> > neckbearded suspenders-wearing UNIX guru circa 1975 living in the
> > basement of your local university to figure out what options are
> > available for network configuration files.
> 
> It sounds like all the distros you mentioned all have distro-specific
> tools just like Fedora/... - it's just that those distro specific tools
> happen to be distro-specific configuration file formats. That said, I
> imagine there must be distro-specific GUI tools to manipulate those
> files too, at least in some cases.

What GUI tools there are in distributions like Debian, Gentoo, and
Slackware tend to be designed to do exactly the same thing you'd do from
the command line, and the distribution as a whole isn't designed to rely
on those tools.  In other words, they're not distribution-specific
tools, and they're wholly optional.  Not only can you avoid using them
without any difficulty, but you can switch back and forth between using
them and doing things directly with a text editor without ill effects.
Further, these tools are not tied to the distribution: they're tools
that are available in a number of distributions, so that you can use
them elsewhere as well.  For the most part, like ifconfig, they're even
available in Fedora, Mandr(ake|iva), and SuSE.

While the configuration file locations do vary between distributions,
they tend to be more accessible and discoverable for people unfamiliar
with the system (aka "newbies").  For instance, network configuration
for Debian is in /etc/network/interfaces, and for Gentoo is in
/etc/conf.d/net.  Fedora, meanwhile, hides it in
/etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth*.  The first time I encountered
this, I found myself bypassing a scripts directory in my search for
network configuration files because I was looking for configuration
files.  When I did look in network-scripts, I discovered that there was
no single file, but instead a collection of separate files that all
needed to be edited individually.  God forbid I should need to make a
bunch of changes all at once -- especially with a handful of files that
were each a few lines long, but someone decided that twenty lines in a
config file was too many.


> 
> So, the only thing you don't like about Fedora/... is the specific
> format of the configuration files and the fact that you couldn't find
> the docs, which are in a standard place (standard for Fedora - i.e. the
> same place as all other non man/info docs for all Fedora packages).

What's the first thing you do on a new (to you) unixy system when you
want documentation?

I use man.  Failing that, I might try info.  Failing that, I search
online.  After spending some time searching online, I might eventually
get directed to your distribution-specific documentation directories.
Great.  Why couldn't there have simply been a manpage in the first
place?

At the very least, it would be helpful to have something useful show up
in the output of "apropos documentation".

Having docs that "are in a standard place (standard for fedora" is the
same as having docs that are in a nonstandard place, unless you're so
wedded to your distribution that you'll never have to worry about the
fact that nobody else does the same thing.

It's not just the fact that the specific format of configuration files
is distasteful and that docs are "in a standard place" for the
distribution but not where I expected them to be.  It's that
discoverability of configuration format and documentation standards for
the distribution sucks, that things are wildly different from the way
other distributions do things for no apparent reason other than sheer
market-differentiation perversity, and that distribution-specific
configuration tools that enhance the usability of the system pretty much
not at all are pushed as the only way to do things in most
documentation.  God forbid I should have to write something
cross-platform that makes use of system configuration.

There are other things I don't like about Fedora as well, but that's all
that's really relevant to this discussion, I think.

-- 
CCD CopyWrite Chad Perrin [ http://ccd.apotheon.org ]
"There comes a time in the history of any project when it becomes necessary
to shoot the engineers and begin production." - MacUser, November 1990