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SubjectRe: [Off topic] Re: New Linux distribution - PSL
Edward S. Marshall wrote:
>
> On Wed, 10 Jun 1998, Martin Konold wrote:
> > > > would get samba and squid (okay, I'm biased ;p ), and a 'workstation'
> > > > distribution may get some nice KDE stuff.
> > >
> > > Whoops you've just installed a couple of security holes unless you
> > > have the right patches applied and exactly the right versions. And
> > > nobody has even tried to audit KDE yet. You've also created a license
> > > violating distribution so far ...
> >
> > Please stop spreading these lies.
> [...lots of threats of legal action deleted...]
>
> Wow. You can threaten people with lawyers. What you cannot apparently do
> is tell people precisely what Alan is lying about:
>
> a) That KDE has never had a formal (or even informal) security audit, and
> recent BUGTRAQ traffic lends itself well to the need for such a
> thing...
>
> -or-
>
> b) That KDE, due to licensing issues, could make life hard on those
> building a distribution around it...
>
> >From where I sit (and frankly, I have no political or financial bias in
> -any- direction), I think they're both very valid points. Care to address
> them instead of providing thinly veiled threats of legal action?
>
> And how the devil did this -ever- come up on linux-kernel anyway?

Right! Let's stick to the subject. Although this PSL discussion is somewhat offtopic,
it's still highly relevant, and for me, I find it hard to keep up with too many more
lists, should the discussion be moved elsewhere.

Funny coincidence, our dk LUG is right about progressing the spreading of Linux, and
I keep thinking: There's too much manual configuration needed, too many decisions for
newbees (even installers/administrators, skilled in other systems) to be made,
requiring too much man/HOWTO-doodi reading, too many patches to post-install, to be
able to talk about not only a damned fast and stable OS, but also one of ease of
installation and use.

Newbees (no offense meant) keep asking the same basic questions, though these should
not have to be asked in the first place at all. Just one simple example is the fstab
settings, disallowing users, say on a presumed workstation setup, default access to
cdrom/floppy; this is ok (security-wise) for a server, but not for a WS. Even just
two lines of params, still requires a couple of man pages and _some_ options to be
considered...

And after installation, what's in the box? All these apps'n utilities are not
visible; you ether have to know they're there or start dig for what does what.

I agree with those suggesting a minimal baseline and the options to make that into
e.g.. a workstation, a http server, a whatever...
Hmmm, wonder if a common baseline would result in slow deaths of some distributions?
There are bound to be less difference, after all.
Or perhaps distributions would _then_ be just what distributions should be all about:
The customizing of a baseline to specific needs.

>
> --
> -------------------. emarshal at logic.net .---------------------------------
> Edward S. Marshall `-----------------------' http://www.logic.net/~emarshal/
>
> Linux labyrinth 2.1.105 #6 SMP Mon Jun 8 22:20:16 CDT 1998 i586 unknown
> 11:00pm up 8:06, 3 users, load average: 0.00, 0.00, 0.00
>
> -
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--
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