Re: Caldera installation - something Debian should learn
On Fri, Apr 23, 1999 at 04:58:24PM -0700, R Garth Wood wrote:
> On Sat, 24 Apr 1999, Craig Sanders wrote:
> > i hope i'm right. if you fail to see the flexibility and usefulness
> > inherent in text files, then i can't see how it's possible for you to
> > design a decent configuration system for unix...you're missing something
>
> Well, what can I say to that? I hope you're wrong???
So this is a religious issue for you? Seriously, though, if you're going
to do the database thing, do it right. Make the whole system a database:
why are config files special? Why not store data in the database, too--
replace the filesystem with the database? There are applications that
would really appreciate the finer-grained acl's and the version control,
and it would actually make that incremental backup feature useful. The
potentials for that are really exciting for certain applications--but
not for unix. You do all that, and it's not unix anymore. Doesn't mean
it's better or worse, just different. If you want a paradigm shift, you
need to make some big changes, you can't just stick stuff on top of an
existing system--look what happened to windows. (How often did DOS crash
in 1987 running wordperfect? It was really good at what it did...and
then someone decided to improve it...)
> > text files are cheap. they are flexible. they depend on an intelligent
> > human being to handle and resolve error conditions.
>
> What if the human is einstein? He was a pretty smart kid but would
> he use windows NT or unix if he was alive today? A hyperbolic
> example but you get the point.
If einstein were alive today, he wouldn't be a systems administrator, so
why would he care?
Mike Stone
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