On Mon, 2005-01-10 at 14:04 -0800, Pete wrote: > Rahul, I guess either I didn't make myself clear enough, or maybe you > mis-read what I typed. An operating system that includes tools to make > configuring it easy is not an option. As far was the point you are > worked up about, that was specifically referring to Cyrus/Sendmail not > working as installed by the distro. If you include a package, make it > work when you install it. It's quite possible this type of thinking, we > don't need this or that, that holds Linux back. I mean really, as far > as an operating system, it kicks Windows butt. But in the area of ease > of installation and configuration, we could all do to quite belly aching > about it not be needed, and just do it and allow Linux to displace > windows, once and for all. Rahul, please step back a moment, how would > you like to buy a new car, and have to rewire it, move things around, > etc, before you could drive it off the dealers lot. We've come a long > way, but whether you want to admit it or not, we have a long way to go. > Let's start walking, instead of claiming we don't need to go. ---- It would be easy to agree or even disagree with you but you have to view everything in context. Red Hat traditionally supplied uw-imap as pop/imap server. Obviously at some level, the decision was reached that uw-imap doesn't serve the Red Hat user base as well as others out there and has substituted dovecot in FC-2 and now puts in Cyrus-IMAP in FC-3. Yes, there is a lack of utility, a lack of integration and a lack of documentation for making this setup work but I think that is one of the purposes of Fedora to incorporate newer technologies and of course, one of the base principles of Linux growth has been to ship the best available at the time, even with shortcomings. RHEL 3 still includes uw-imap and Beta 4 has the same Dovecot and Cyrus- IMAP offerings as FC-3 and clearly that is the future of RHEL and Fedora. There are some who feel it necessary to compare Linux to Windows even to the point of tossing obligatory comparisons about this feature, ease of integration and the like. It seems as though these people don't fathom the bottom line of open source software and probably need to read the Cathedral and the Bazaar to get the underlying philosophy. <http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/cathedral-bazaar/cathedral-bazaar/> Pay attention to the chapter of release early - release often. If open source software waited until all features were implemented, all configurations were simple, all issues resolved, we would have little interest, little to do, little to talk about. This is a community of people actively involved in the software industry, not merely as consumers but also as technical support, documentation writers, bug reporters, programmers and integrators. We should resolve to encourage community involvement - not just consumerism. Craig
