Re: Windows and DLLs

[David Jeske <jeske home chat net>]

On Thu, Oct 01, 1998 at 10:15:38PM +0200, Jochem Huhmann wrote:
> On Thu, 01 Oct 1998 11:05:29 PDT David Jeske wrote:
> 
> > 1) a user wants to use an app which only works with a newer
> > lib. (i.e. he can't install it easily unless he's administrator, or a
> > unix wizard)
> 
> Someone has to manage the system. Someone has to install apps. That's 
> the admin. With this app wrapper thing, Joe User installs foo.app 1.2, 
> because it has this bar-feature he needs. Great. Then the admin 
> installs foo.app 1.21 - Joe still works with his outdated 1.2, which 
> may have serious security flaws.

'users' can do this today, it's just a pain in the neck for the users.

> On a distributed multi user system (aka Unix) the admin should install
> and manage apps, not the user. There *may* be circumstances under which
> a user wishes to install his own apps with his own libs, like it is the
> case with gtk and gimp and gnome and such - but that are actually not
> users, but developers. Users should not need to install apps, they
> should work with the apps and libs which are installed and stable.

I completely disagree. It may be adventageous to keep facist control
over the apps installed at some places, but not everywhere.

Plus, if people are going to be using Gnome/UNIX as a desktop at home,
then you can no longer rely on the 'admin' having any more skills than
the 'user'.

> The admin has to wrap a script around this app. Let users do that kind
> of stuff and you will have 12 users working on this machine with 13
> different versions of that app, using 14 different libs. Total Cost of
> Ownership, anyone? Such a system would be as worse as Windows. 

> Windows (and to some degree also NeXTstep) was meant as single user
> system, where the user is the admin - actually there is no admin at
> all, there is just a hell of a mess. Free software, which produces
> new versions of apps and libs on a daily basis makes it even
> worse. With application wrappers you will have dozens of slightly
> different versions of any given library and application floating
> around on a machine or network.  They may all work, but I certainly
> would not like to manage such a system, trying to keep it a secure
> and friendly place.

Nextstep functions incredibly well both in single-user and multi-user
setups.

I guess are goals are just different, I think the whole point of Gnome
is to make Linux accessable to the "users who have to be their own
admins".

I don't know where it is that you administer a network of machines
with RPM packages, but I've found it extremely inadequate. You can't
"remove old versions" of things when you have hundreds of users who
have written scripts which depend on the old versions. I administered
a large free toolset on a network of over 200 Solaris machines, and
the toolset was setup to keep every version of every tool ever
installed around. I had to compile everything from source, and I had
to install everything in it's own private wrapper
directory. (http://www.chat.net/~jeske/Projects/UnixTools/)

> Gnome  (and all its apps) is work in progress, you should not take it
> for a thing for *users*. Users will get Gnome 1.0 someday, like they get
> Gimp 1.0 with GTK 1.0 and it will just work. When Gnome 1.1 is out, they
> will "rpm -U" it and all will be fine. Everyone working with or at Gnome
> now is on his own. 

My mother is never going to 'rpm -U' and I won't use RPM until both
RPM and UNIX support installing both new and old versions of apps at
the same time with no collisions, guaranteed.

> Sorry, I don't see any problems with the way applications are installed
> and libs are managed now. It has been working great for many years,
> better than any other way, IMHO.

What have you been doing?

I'm really growing tired of this 'I don't see any problems, and thus
your arguments mean nothing to me' attitude.

-- 
David Jeske (N9LCA) + http://www.chat.net/~jeske/ + jeske@chat.net