Prana wrote:
> Hiya,
>
> Did you guys read the review in ActiveWin.com about Linux Mandrake 7.2?
>
> Since last year I've been saying "Turn off services by default" for more
> than 10 times. Now I read a review in ActiveWin.com about LM 7.2 being a
> resource hog, and it's true because they're running a whole bunch of
> services turned on by default - I guess they install the "Customized ->
> Development" version. For God's sake, what for?
>
> I've told many times that this is for security and *speed*, why nobody
> (developers) listened to me? Users, being Linux newbies, have all
> promiscous services running, and if they forget to run Mandrake Update
> they will get hacked. They don't even know what a daemon is, so why
> bother turning all NFS server on? Why not just give a message box after
> install saying that the services for servers are turned off by default
> and that they can run drakxservices?
>
> How many times Zope has a security vulnerability? What about rpc.statd?
> And in 8.0 there's an install option that asks them about what services
> they want to run. For God's sake, they're Windows-convert users, how can
> you expect them to know what a daemon is. Most of my friends who runs
> Mandrake don't even know what xfs means. They go like "Huh?" when I told
> them what nfs, identd, etc means. *Just turn the services off _by
> default_*. This is because Mandrake have ALL services running, at least
> it is for the development version. I don't know how many times I've told
> Mandrake developers to turn it off by default, and they NEVER listen to
> me. And now a whole bunch of people who don't know how to turn it off,
> of course, say that LM is slow, whereas it's actually much faster than
> Win 2000 if they turn them off by default.
>
> Why not put a message saying them to run "drakxservices"? That's better
> than turning all junk services like cfengine and stuff that won't be use
> by regular users?
>
> And also, they say that LM 7.2 is bloated (read ActiveWin.com). Of
> course it is, since it includes stuff like GIMP, XMMS, etc. However,
> I've personally never used stuff useless stuff like xmame and xmess
> which takes a lot of hard-drive space and they're in the default
> selection of install. I never run tin, xrn, or other old and ugly news
> readers.
>
> I'm not trying to flame here. I personally like Mandrake and I dedicate
> my software for Mandrake, and so far I've contributed 2 (gnome-telnet -
> 7.2 ext CD #2 and Mandrake Update Robot - contrib 8.0). I really hope
> Mandrake will now turn off the services by default like Redhat 7.0. Many
> people don't like services turned on by default, it's useless, trust me.
> If they want to know about how to turn it on, give a simple message box
> after the install to run drakxservices.
>
> I hope this time Mandrake will listen the opinion of users. I've had
> many people who are confused - what is "heartbeat", "cfengine",
> "bootparamd", "xntpd","tftp", "xinetd", etc. They don't even understand
> those cryptic abbreviation. My point is, I hope for 8.0 all of the junk
> services are turned off by default.
>
> I believe if we run a vote in MandrakeForum.com, a lot of people will
> want to have services turned off by default, for security and speed.
>
I will second this. I've used Mandrake for awhile, and always turn
everything off that I don't want or need, (nfs, heartbeat, fetchmail,
zope, ...) during install. However, most users don't know what or how to
turn daemons off, and therefore don't!
I definitely turn off "mon", as it usually has my system for lunch right
after the install. Another thing that slows performance initially are
things like slocate. I know that it is necessary to update the database
and that once the database is updated, the next update goes relatively
quickly. However, if you have a number of partitions/hd's the initial
update takes forever, and all your resources are gone. A new user would
have no clue what is happening.
I completely agree with turning everything off by default and presenting
a dialog with directions on how to turn them on.
My 2 Cents.
Pete
