Norton Go Home! We don't want you!

[mike at bria]

In an article, ra.MsState.Edu!it1 (Tim Tsai) writes:
|In article <433 at bria>:
||In an article, ms.uky.edu!kherron (Kenneth Herron) writes:
||In my "not-quite-so-humble" opinion, armchair sysadmins deserve DOS.
||You are talking about two things here: system administration and end-use.
||In the DOS world, "end-user" and "administrator" are one in the same.
||Not so in the UNIX world.
|
|  It is very often the case in the 386/Unix world..  With prices of
|  workstations dropping, more end users will have their own Unix box on
|  their desk.

And most of these workstations with be networked, and have a central
authority.  I doubt that since an accountant has his dumb terminal replaced
with a workstation, he is going to be that much more inclined to admin
his workstation by virtue of it's capability to be administered.

||The end-user does not and should not need to know about anything other
||than logging in, reading/sending mail, and using the application(s) that
||meet his/her job requirements.  This same end-user has no use for NU.
|
|  There are lots of computer proficient "end-users" who aren't
|  sysadmins, and they'll use whatever tools they find necessary.

Computer proficient users can do whatever they like, permissions not with-
standing.  However, the thrust of tool development is, and should be, the
computer professional.

||Personally, I would never trust an administrator that leaned on menus
||and shrink-wrapped scripts _too_ much.  How much is too much?  I have
||encountered "sysadmins" who couldn't add a user without some sort of
||script.  Not worth a dime, IMHO.
|
|  Sysadmins' gotta start somewhere.  Were you born with knowledge of
|  Unix internals?  What's wrong with packages that ease the job of system
|  administrators?  By your definition, any sysadmin that relies on a
|  full-screen editor isn't worth a dime either.  A *REAL* sysadmin would
|  use ed, right?

Yes, you do have to start somewhere.  My point was that too many UNIX
"professionals" are not learning the _innards_ of the operating system.
They are using scripts and such (that were designed to make routine jobs
a bit easier) as a _crutch_.  And yes, a sysadmin that relies on 'vi' and
has no idea how to use 'ed' is NOT worth a dime.  Know why?  Sometime, he's
gonna run into a situation where his /usr filesystem got hosed, or the
/etc/termcap got chunked.  If something like that stops a sysadmin, then
yep, he's worthless as a plug nickel.

||There is a tradeoff here.  It seems to me that making things easier for you,
||things get more convoluted for me.  No thanks.  How about putting a
||a copy of this program in /usr/local/bin and make it first in PATH for
||those end-users ...
|
|  How does installing a package make things any more difficult for you?

It depends.  Since Norton attaches itself, virus-like, to my kernel, and
induces the kernel to lie to me about the true state of affairs on the
system, I would count this as a hinderance.

|  I'm glad you aren't my sysadmin.

And, oh boy am I glad you're not my end-user. :-)

-- 
Michael Stefanik, MGI Inc., Los Angeles| Opinions stated are not even my own.
Title of the week: Systems Engineer    | UUCP: ...!uunet!bria!mike
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Remember folks: If you can't flame MS-DOS, then what _can_ you flame?