Hi Sturat,
On Mon, Sep 12, 2011 at 3:58 PM, Stuart Henderson <[email protected]>
wrote:
> On 2011-09-12, Jeffrey Walton <[email protected]> wrote:
>> Otherwise, if pkg_add is the 'installer', then the tool or process is
>> broken. In the later case - as a dumb user - I don't consider required
>> configuration changes 'knob turning'.
>
> pkg_add is a package installer, not a configuration editor. By policy
> OpenBSD doesn't second-guess your intentions and reconfigure your system
> just because you've installed a package.
I think my confusion lies in the [overloaded] meaning of 'install';
and my presumption that one who wants to install a package really
wants it configured and ready for use. I did not realize there were
folks who want to install software, but don't want it configured (and
don't want to use it).
Perhaps Item 15 of the FAQ could differentiate the meaning of
'install' more succinctly? ('How to install' was one of the first
topics I researched, and 15.2.4 was the first items I visited).
> Applications for Microsoft OS often *do* do this; the result: the
Don't forget the Mac OS X installer, Debian and friends via apt-get,
and Fedora with yum (I don't work with BlackBerry and Android enough
to speak about their process). As far as I am aware, all perform an
installation with appropriate configuration changes.
> There are plenty of OS geared towards, to use your words, a "dumb user";
> OpenBSD is not one. (actually I would change this to "inexperienced admin"
> as it's quite possible for a system administrator to set things up for a
> non-technical user, as happens all the time in the commercial software
> world but also demonstrated nicely in the 'Puffy In The Corporate Aquarium'
> article in bsdmag/undeadly).
Don't worry - I don't take offense to being a 'dumb user'. Half the
time its all that I really am, and the other half its all I really
want to be. If I'm spending time researching how to administer a
system, I'm not working on my primary task.
I kind of exist in a middle ground - I only need to compile a library
and run test cases to make sure the software is OpenBSD compatible. I
don't want to be an administrator or a user. Please don't take offense
as its not meant to be an insult.
For what its worth, I needed to fetch some info from the web, so I
installed Firefox. Unfortunately, Firefox crashed constantly under the
default window manager (FVVM?), so I moved to Gnome to try and
stabilize the system.
>> http://xkcd.com/342/. ,
> 349, surely? :)
Most certainly!
Jeff
