Pointless rant: Red Hat Enterprise Server sucks!

[Kurt Granroth]

(forgot my usual disclaimer: i'm not at all biased -- used to work for
SuSE, have used it since '97 or so, etc etc)

Tony E - Jaraeth wrote:
>> But come on!  It's not 1997 anymore.  Why do I have to do so many bloody
>> things by hand?
> 
> While I see and sympathize with your point, it helps to be fully aware
> of how to use a particular distribution of Linux.  RedHat, Slackware,
> Debian, Ubuntu, Gentoo ... all have different configuration settings.

And while I can see your point, I must completely and totally disagree
with it :-D

There is a time and place for futzing around with config files by hand:

A. You are using Linux as a hobby and just want to learn how it all
works.  I moved on from that stage years ago.
B. You feel it gives you more geek cred to be able to create your
sendmail.cf file by hand (M4 is for wussies!).  I'll admit, that was me
back in the day.  I don't care anymore.
C. Everything is broken and you have to fix things.  Okay, so I'm never
going to be done with that... but I'd rather find out where my
particular distro stores that file when I *need* to.  I'm a bit of a
procrastinating masochist in that way ;-)

These days, I want my Linux servers and my desktops to Just Work(tm).
SUSE has shown that it's possible to have every bit of the power and
flexibility while still being extremely easy to configure and use.

> As you mention aboce:
> 
> Edit /etc/sysconfig/network
> Set "HOSTNAME=some.host.com"
> Edit /etc/hosts as you so choose
> Edit /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth0(:1, etc)
> Done.
> 
> This has been the case for RedHat for way longer than I remember, before
> RH7.3.  This may seem stupid, to not have a configuration wizard, and
> yes, as you also pointed out, you *could* use "system-config-network",
> but it is my own opinion, that any good admin, can work faster on a
> command line and doesn't always rely on tools that may not set things up
> properly.

But see, that's sort of my point.  Red Hat *hasn't* changed that in a
very very long time.  But they should have!  I haven't used a RH variant
at a sysadmin level since whatever version was new back in 1997 (RH 4,
maybe?).  That's how I had to do things back then.  To discover I still
have to do it that way was a bit of a shock.

And I disagree that any good admin could work faster editing the files
by hand.  I have a co-worker that's been a die-hard Linux geek for 10
years or so.  He does everything by hand.  A few months ago, we were
both setting up an iSCSI initiator and target.  He was using either
Gentoo or Ubuntu at the time (forget which).  After two days of reading
page after page of web sites and editing this file and that, he had
something working.  I installed the yast iscsi module, read an iSCSI
overview page to find out what the terminology was, typed in the right
values, clicked Finish and voila!

It's easier to edit the config files by hand ONLY if you've done it many
many times.

>> Shame on you, Red Hat!  You've been around for a very long time.  Plenty
>> of time to create a coherent set of configuration utilities that work
>> equally well in text mode as in a GUI.  SUSE has had this for *years*.
> 
> Better start yelling at Slackware, which has been around longer.  And
> Gentoo, which is newer.  *BSD too.  If you want a GUI or TUI, more power
> to you... and maybe I'm old, be real admins use command lines ;)

I'll admit that I'm holding Red Hat to a different standard than I am
other distributions.  That's because Red Hat IS different.  Slackware
(first distro I started with, btw) is designed to be stripped down.
It's as close to a "pure" Linux distro as you can get.  I love it... but
it's not the leading server Linux for exactly that reason.

Gentoo is for Linux ricers.  I used it for nearly two years, before it
completely fell to pieces.  It has a certain geek charm to it.  When I
saw that the most recent version has a GUI installer, I almost choked on
the peach I was eating at the time.  That's just wrong!  And any admin
that puts Gentoo on a production server is certifiably insane.

No, I'm picking on Red Hat because they ARE the leader.  They are the
one that goes toe-to-toe with the Big Boys in Enterprise environments.
I expect better of them as a result.  And when I see that Red Hat
Enterprise Linux 5 has the same primitive config guis that Red Hat Linux
5 (ten years ago!) had... well, that's just sad.

Kurt