[mdlug] OT: Microsoft Monopoly

[Robert Adkins II]

> 
> This is arguing an implementation against the concept.  [And 
> I haven't seen a trashed windows registry in a long time 
> anyway].  The mature concept is Active Directory. 
> 

  You haven't seen it because Microsoft has developed "failsafes" to hide
corrupted registries from the user/admin space. It continually duplicates
the registry into a "safe zone" and will "quietly" restore good
configurations if it discoveres corruption in the registry.

  That is not an ideal solution in my book.

  The plain text files used on Linux/UNIX are more robust. One thing that I
have seen being put into play over the last 15 years that I have been
administrating Linux is a combination of the plain text, for robustness, and
a binary "stack" for speed. (Which is the only real advantage a clean
Windows Registry has over a clean Linux install for configuration access,
it's faster than reading plain text files.)

  As for Administration Tools, those are becoming better and easier to use
all of the time. In fact, some of them are really awesome in that you have
the same interface, whether you are looking at it via a GUI or via an SSH
Shell. (I'm talking about Yast2 on the SuSe platform, which has been
consistent between GUI and CLI for so many years that I can't remember when
it wasn't.)

  There's plenty of easy to use configuration tools for Linux, such as the
Webmin system and Yast2 as two prime examples.

  They both have GUI tools for building CA, and "Active Directory" setups.

> >   At least with plain text, you can
> > put the configuration into proper version control and use a 
> > configuration management tool to manage things centrally.
> 
> Sure, *you* can.  But that's just the point.  Everyone 
> roll-your-own solution to system administration isn't good 
> system administration.  You get hit by a bus.... and pity the 
> poor fool who has to come in to manage your systems.
> 

  The configuration file for Samba is the same, no matter what server you go
to. The only real differences are what it calls for external/internal
authentication, the names of shares and permissions. If someone who claims
to be fluent in Samba administration is unable to walk up, review the
configuration file itself or is unable to fire up Swat or Webmin or
what-have-you-GUI-tool and see what it is doing and how to manage it, then
they really aren't fluent in Samba, period.

  The same can be said for virtually any and all other services that you can
run on Linux. The concept of each admin building a completlely different and
unreadable by another admin configuration file on Linux is a dead concept.

  -Rob