[CALUG] [OT] Web-based Mail -- WAS: "Where to start" and "Linux courseware"

[Bryan J Smith]

Fedora, Debian, Ubuntu and others have their community sites and information.  Most everything Fedora-based (including Red Hat and many projects) work one way (i.e., Red Hat's Python stack ... Anaconda, YUM, et al).  Most everything else Debian-based works another, with a few Ubuntu-specifics (and even Mint has its separate approaches), although Ubuntu (or Fedora for that matter) doesn't have the strong packaging guidelines as Debian, which keeps it clean (BIAS: I was a former Debian maintainer, and love the anal guidelines).

For the most part, there's little to no reason to drop down to a command-line these days.  And God knows when you're going there, Windows is typically just as difficult to sysadmin too (and requires knowledge beyond the typical Windows user).  GUI administration is commonplace in Linux, much more GUI-only user experiences.

And the "genericicity" is there.  Most of it is on GNOME, largely because that's where Red Hat and Novell put most of their developers, among others (I think Red Hat leads 8, and Novell 9 at least until recently, of GNOME's approximate 30-something core components).  Canonical is increasing their submissions as well, as growth doesn't happen overnight (although I encourage Ubuntu users to help fund Canonical as we all, the community, win with more developers).  Most of the legacy documentation ignores this although, but again as I mentioned, even Red Hat (as of EL6 circa 2010) first sysadmin class (RH124) is now GUI-centric.

Red Hat developed NetworkManager and PackageKit, among many other desktop approaches.  NetworkManager quickly earned a place among Ubuntu users (enough that I always enjoyed when my fellow Fedora would interrupt a presentation where someone was praising Ubuntu for NetworkManager and asked them to bring up it's "help, about" just for giggles).  PackageKit is still something people either love or hate, with most existing Fedora and Ubuntu users hating it, but it's an attempt at an unified GUI for Apt, Yum, SmartPM, etc...

Other things like PulseAudio, SPICE, etc..., basically required for open source VDI and other, remote, multi-platform solutions (including Windows thin clients on Linux), are still debated.  While most people support PulseAudio, I've run into a lot of issues and direct ALSA implementations outside of the Red Hat, Novell-SuSE and other spaces (e.g., Ubuntu).  There are some other disconnects between some distributions.

And then you have enterprise features.

E.g., Fedora-based has been Netscape-centric (NSS), because Red Hat purchased the original, enterprise LDAP solution over seven (7) years ago (AOL-Netscape iPlanet), and it has various compliance/certifications when Red Hat ran into concerns with OpenLDAP.  Most others have been OpenLDAP (Red Hat only makes the OpenLDAP clients work out-of-the-box, not the server, while 389/RHDS is the standard for them).  The newer IPA/SSSD and other components are going in a completely different direction, all while being fully, legacy POSIX (UNIX/Linux) LDAP, Kerberos, etc... compatible (because it's still iPlanet, Kerberos, etc... underneath, just "canned" into a single command set and web admin GUI).  Others have had to take notice because it's so cake and canned (like AD), and  IPA/SSSD clients are now being integrated into all distros.  Most have never been NSS aligned in the past like Fedora-based.

Then you have Samba 4 being focused on a direct replacement for AD, not focused on legacy POSIX integration, because AD is such a fork from its LDAP/Kerberos roots.  While some of the same people are working on both (e.g., Red Hat's Simo), there are major differences in goals.

-- Bryan

P.S.  It might have been my message that caused some of it in the digest.  I'm about to give Yahoo Mail the boot.  So tired of them not getting the message on word wrap.  It's something extremely easy to implement, yet they botch it.

I've stayed with Yahoo over the years, after I stopped running my own servers (mid '90s to early '00s), because they handled headers and threading better than Google, who tried to make subject sorting "the standard."  It wasn't until GMail was out of beta before Google finally got lambasted enough they started preserving the Message-ID headers.  But I'm not interested in GMail for select reasons.

I really need to do a survey of web-based mail providers.  There's really no excuse for the crap Yahoo still doesn't address, and only gets worse by the year.




----- Original Message -----
From: Walt Smith <waltechmail at yahoo.com>
Sent: Monday, October 31, 2011 8:34 PM

and other misc stuff here.

Wow,
when I look at the digest, there's a crapload of text
running off the screen with no formatting !!!
Bryan, Thanks for CC'ing me with the original message !!
( Just writing an observation !!  Not a criticism of maillist
setting and a thanky ).

Bryan makes a good case that I've been thinking about
for quite sometime: the user experience, and gives good
examples.  User of applications
rather than sys op, maintenance, or debug/config issues.
There doesn't seem to be much in the way of internal interest in
the kernel, or X anymore.  Networking and desktop still seems hot topic.
Old topic:  In lug meetings, I think it would be good
to have more user apps discussed.  But have occassional in-depth
topics.   Keep the user app discussions to 1 hour, in-depth to 2.
If time permits, certainly user app discussion could drill down.
Drive-by 20 minute seminars are good.

1. I know the 1999 (C) of the linux man page is out of date.
There are SO many man pages and every other web page for howto's
and configs that are out of date.
And yet, no mechanism to bring them up to date.   I had wondered what
comments the link might promote ( provoke ?)  <g>  I used that page yers
ago, and like still like it.

2. The OP for the courseware didn't say ( as I recall ) exactly why
he wanted a course. Perhaps the company will pay the bill, give
company time to study, perhaps earn credits toward a diploma, or
the person learns best in a structured environment.  I'm not sure
he received much in the way of a desired answer yet.

3. Is there enough difference between the distros that discussions
need be distro centric ? I'd like to see more genericicity.
(yes, I invented the word!). I must admit I've tried a Ubuntu lately,
and with the accessory of a reasonably hi speed connection ( at uas ),
I'm really impressed with how easy it is to do:
apt-get install some-app

It's easy and really nice !!

It's also disconcerting (  but then, I'm partial luddite ) that
installing some simple app results in a 150 MegaByte D/L....
regularly.   (I don't think this is unique to Unbuntu ) 
While visually appealing, I can't really get used to
the Ubuntu desktop.  I MUST be missing the easy way to do things...
I keep clicking dis, dat and da otter to find maybe "terminal"
etc...although, I'm STILL not quite sure what the REAL root
username and password are.  Someone showed me 
sudo su
#command.


Can I have a class on how to use Ubuntu as a first time linux user ?


I *think* I'm looking forward to a F16 release... but maybe CentOS.


"What do you use your computer for?


3.  In my humble experiences, tying up loose ends is the 80% of projects:
trying to make nice.  And the least enjoyable for developers.
Is there some way to facilitate the final niceness ?  Is that a case for
some paid person ( if so how ) ?  

4.  I think the role of volunteers in the linux sphere should be
rediscussed from some other POV.   I don't suggest that anyone who
volunteers efforts should do anything differently, but that the roles
they play be understood better by the whole of us. 

5. It may be worth to discuss what those in the LUG do with
Windows and compare.  ( I realize that a mention of the "W" word 
stresses out a few folk ).



"What do you use your computer for?   ( intentional copy)


Walt......


Celebrating over 14,000 emails in my Yahoo Inbox !