Date: Thu, 16 Apr 1998 11:51:46 -0700 (PDT) From: Woody Carey <wcarey@cs.uoregon.edu> To: Stefanos Kiakas <stefanos@ringworld.uniscape.com> Cc: freebsd-advocacy@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Promoting FreeBSD. Message-ID: <Pine.GSO.3.96.980416114137.10114E-100000@basix.cs.uoregon.edu> In-Reply-To: <9804161814.AA01490@ringworld.uniscape.com>
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On Thu, 16 Apr 1998, Stefanos Kiakas wrote:
> Hello,
>
> Here are some of my ideas about promoting FreeBSD.
[snip]
>
> 2) Over the last year we have had opportunities to promote FreeBSD to
> our clients, but many of them are scared due to the lack of a GUI to
> administer users and the system. We should consider creating GUI tools to
> manipulate the underlying text files and allow people to configure the systems
> using these tools.
>
> It can be as simple as a Web interface or an executable running on
> the system. Ideally I would like to get some tools similar to those found on
> NeXTSTEP/OPENSTEP.
>
> Comments anyone?
> stef
Re 2 above, there are significant benefits and dangers to this approach.
The main benefit is that the FreeBSD user community attracts more users.
(greater raw headcount).
There are two dangers that come to my mind:
a) Users come to believe that FreeBSD is 'easy' to use, but then become
dissatisfied when they need to use their understanding of the system,
and the command line, to fix a problem.
b) Some users become severely limited in their ability to administer a
system that their business and perhaps their livelihood have come to
depend on, their abilities being strictly defined by what is and is
not in the web interface sysadmin tool.
In addition, this gui tool would have to be Very robust and work
basically perfectly, for it to be of any use to people who wanted to
use FreeBSD, but did not want to learn the system or the command line.
gui sysadmin tools are a nice thing, for sure, though, for newbies and
more experience users alike.
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