SEUL: Two Necessary Tasks

["Jeffrey S. Dutky" <dutky@BellAtlantic.net>]

In an attempt to clearthe waters I submit that two tasks loom
above the other varied and asundry issues facing this project:
installation and administration.

These are the two tasks that major comercial operating systems
have managed to reduce to a bare minimum, either by providing
competent tools (installation routines for Windows95 and MacOS,
administrative tools for NeXTSTEP/OPENSTEP and WindowsNT) or
by eliminating the task itself (administration on Windows 3.1,
Windows95 and MacOS). By comparrison, LINUX is a byzantine
managere of intricate and confusing arcana and minutia.

Installation:

We need an installation system that is able to determine what
the hardware configuration of the system is, perform any needed
preliminary tasks (i.e. partition the hard disk) and install
a basic LINUX distribution on the system. This should be done
with as little human interaction as possible. In fact, it would
be best if the level of human interaction were kept at the level
of "Press ENTER to begin." and "Installation Complete, Press
ENTER to Reboot."

Administration:

We need a set of administrative tools that allow the user to
perform all system administration without having to know anything
about the various configuration file format or startup scripts.
Many users balked at the intricacies of CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT.
When presented with full complexity of LINUX system administration
it would be the rare user indeed who would not opt to retreat to
the comfort of an MS product.

I'm not trying to say that there aren't other tasks that demand
our attention. These two, however, are key to the success of the
SEUL project.

I think that we should perform a survey of the currently available
tools for these two tasks; rate these tools as to how close they
come to the needs of a SEUL distribution; and choose a set of tools
that we will try to enhance to fit our purposes.

I am willing to make the survey of administrative tools. I can have
such a survey done in a few weeks and will post it here then.

- Jeff Dutky
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