Jay D. Dyson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes on 29 April 1999 at 08:49:53
-0700
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>
> On Thu, 29 Apr 1999, Vince Vielhaber wrote:
>
> > > Not everyone installing Unix/Linux nowadays is an OS guru.
> >
> > If they're playing the role of admin, they damn sure should be. It's
> > obvious from the beginning that they're not installing windoze 95.
>
> Okay, either I'm seriously underestimating my skill set or a lot
> of other people are seriously overestimating the skill set necessary to
> install Qmail without inflicting self-injury.
>
> Which is it? I consider myself competent, but by no means a
> turbo-guru of *nix by any stretch of the imagination.
I'd guess people are overestimating the difficulty of installing qmail
(especially on a simple system).
I've never been a sysadmin as my main job (though I had partial
responsilibity for running a Sun 3/280 server for a while once). On
the other hand, I'd been running Linux boxes since 0.99PL15, I think
it was. I switched to qmail from smail, after running it for a while
(and implementing some patches to do what I needed with virtual
domains). Never did install or understand sendmail. (All this was
pre-RPM, at least pre my encountering RPM). I found qmail quite easy
to install and configure. My Linux box was the first MTA I ever
configured (and the first DNS, and the first httpd, and...). I did
run a BBS for years, too, on Fidonet, which has things a bit like mail
configuration to handle.
On the other hand, I *have* been actively involved with computers
continuously since 1968, when I started keypunching my own programs
and loading the cards into an IBM 1620 :-) .
All of this probably gives me a *very* different set of knowledge and
attitudes than somebody who is breaking the Windows boundary by
installing Linux for the first time! The primary difference may
simply be that I don't assume it's supposed to / going to be easy.
--
David Dyer-Bennet [EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://www.ddb.com/~ddb (photos, sf) Minicon: http://www.mnstf.org/minicon
http://ouroboros.demesne.com/ The Ouroboros Bookworms
Join the 20th century before it's too late!
