Progeny's plans could make distros interchangable

[Gowator]

To add a hints of devils advocate:

It really depends on how they do it.

Optional installer/HW detection is one thing.

 

What I think Sarah31 is saying is what happens when it goes wrong! (as it will)

 

Mac's are very limited in the hardware they can use. That makes things simpler.

They still run most stuff as root though.

 

Also, this tends to forget WHO is doing the work in FLOSS. Is it KDE/Gnome/XFree/mysql or is it the distro developers?

 

I know I hammer on about the MDK wizards but they always leave you completely FUBAR when they screw up. Probably they get better and better then someone invents a new pirce of hardware and they screw up.

 

However a bit of standardisation is always good.

My experience of the 'simple to install' distro's is they either install or don't. Very little inbetween. Whereas slack/gentoo/LFS etc. are more or less dead certs (if you have the time) and you manage to actually load a kernel.

 

No ones taking away vi right now but some of the more complex and hence simpler to config distro's do. They are moving towards a windows registry type mess or have automatic config's.

 

My SME server box is like this. I can edit smb.conf all I want by hand but it will be overwritten next time I boot unless I use the SME template system which is horrendously complex.

 

Then the 'GUI' has lots of nice webtools, actually GUI being relative since it doesn't have X. However these webtools are pretty limited, in order to add phpBB I have to edit the templates and run some scripts and these update the startup scripts.

If I want to change my pppoe password its the same crap, I can't just go and edit it with vi else it will reset next time.

 

All this friendlyness comes with a massive price.

 

Once again the world will split in those that actually have things of value on their linux boxes and those who view them as toys. There's nothing wrong with viewing it as a toy but don't then crisitise others for demanding stability and upgradeability etc. My XBOX is a toy. It doesn't contain anything of value. All the files are NFS mounted. So if I wanna reinstall etc. its just a click or two.

However my server is not a toy. If it breakes its serious.

I don't want automatic HW detection/updates etc. running on it etc.