[mdlug] OT: Microsoft Monopoly

[John Wiersba]

On Fri, Aug 20, 2010 at 08:27:05AM -0400, Adam Tauno Williams wrote:
> IMO, what it really means is they-are-right.  I'm an Open Source
> advocate and a UNIX/LINUX admin for ~15 years.  And I have no problem
> admitting this in many regards.  The Open Source communities' insane [or
> just lazy] addiction to the-txt-config-file is a serious hold-up for
> LINUX deployment;  it means all admin tools, to the point that they even
> exist, essentially *suck* and will eventually trash your config [acting
> as anti-admin tools].  Fortunately with XML configuration, XDG, D-Bus,
> etc... we are *finally* starting to move beyond the
> idiot-who-thinks-sysadmin-is-proficiency-in-vi.

Not being a sysadmin, but having used unix/linux as my primary work/home 
environment for 18 years, I can say that text configuration files are *not* the 
problem and are, in many ways, *much* better than other solutions.  I, for one, 
am very happy about linux/unix's insane/lazy addiction to text config files.  It 
enables many things that are extremely hard to achieve with other approaches.  
Not to say that it doesn't have its drawbacks.  For many sysadmin functions, I 
suppose lack of standardization/centralization is a drawback.  As an aside, I 
don't know that anyone would think vi is the be-all-end-all of sysadmin 
proficiency.

As was said in subsequent comments, it's the fact that there are so many 
roll-your-own, under-documented formats that causes some things to be "harder" 
in the linux world.  The roll-your-own approach to computers is both a strength 
and a weakness, just as it is in biology and society in general.  But overall, I 
believe that it is much more robust and scalable than the-one-true-way approach.

It is in the domain of linux/unix distributions to provide for the tools and 
translation layers that make standardized/centralized administration possible 
and reduce the need to understand all the nuances of thousands of separate 
packages and their configuration formats.  Distributions can do the work to make 
their packages play well together.

Finally, I feel obligated to point out that the Windows registry is an 
abomination, both in concept and implementation.  As much as I am not impressed 
by most things Microsoft, I am still flabbergasted that such a poor design could 
make it into Windows.  Hopefully linux projects will stay far away from that 
approach.

-- John