thelinuxlink.net

Posted: **Mon Jun 06, 2005 10:24 pm**

This discussion was brought up in the chat channel. Its a topic that I hold with importance.

Here's my posting from Lug-Radio. I am interested in others views on this matter.

Hi all,

I want to start some commentary, thoughts and opinions on GUI admin tools.

What I mean by "Admin Tools" is tools that help a user manage his or her system. Things like mounting network shares, adding and removing users/groups, setup a UPS, boot options and disk partitioning. This, of course, can be all done in a bash terminal with or without tools like chkconfig, but thats another issue. What I want to discuss is GUI Admin Tools.

Two reasons why I think GUI Admin Tools are important.

1) Sure I can edit text config files with VI, heck I do it on my server through ssh all the time. But I feel that the year is 2005 and for my Desktop I should be able to simply use a GUI tool. Distro's make such great applications doing so many things, yet they often forget the GUI Admin tool. Mandriva can do it, why cant eveyone else ?

2) I like to get other users using Linux. The reasons why are another whole thread. The users I deal with have trouble in Windows adding email accounts and editing pictures with MS Paint etc. So there's no way they could use a bash terminal with much success; it would mainly lead to frustration. So they need a GUI admin tool. Thus, I like to use the GUI admin tools myself so I can easily help guide them through that when I need to.

A big reason why I use Mandriva and recommend it to everyone I know is the Mandrake Control Center. This GUI Admin Tool allows you to do just about anything to your system (see URL below for screenshots).

http://dward.us/Files/linux/mcc

The other GUI Admin Tool I use is Webmin. I really only use it for managing databases on my server but it has many options. In fact it has more then MCC, but I tend to think its a little too indepth for the regular "joe" user. I haven't investigate Webmin much and endevour to do so soon.

I see Mepis has a control center of sorts. Although missing many of the features that MCC has, if it continues it may be an equal.

Other Tools like Porthole etc are so limited in scope I haven't bother to mention in any detail.

So are there other ones out there that i have missed ???

What is everyones thoughts on this ??

PS i quickly created that page with Nvu and I am impressed. Best WYIWYG I have ever tried (not that I dont prefer HTML coding)

Posted: **Tue Jun 07, 2005 6:37 pm**

Having played too much in the Slackware world, I am not too up to date on gui admin tools. I echo that webmin is pretty cool, but I have been hesitant to deploy due to potential security issues (I know you can secure it pretty well, but just having it is a security risk) and the fact that most of what I would do in webmin I would do ssh'd into the server anyway.

Cups is probably the biggest exception. I use the cups web interface for configuring printers. I have used the KDE (Debian) and Gnome (Ubuntu) admin tools for cups and they have worked out pretty well too.

I tried getting my wireless configured through Ubuntu's (which I believe is the Gnome Network Configuration utility) but was unsuccessful. This would most likely be due to having a usb wireless adapter only supported by wlan-ng drivers and trying to get wep working at the time.

Still, I must say that the gui config tools have come a considerable way from linuxconf and the first versions of yast. Anyone remember LISA?

Posted: **Wed Jun 08, 2005 11:03 am**

there are many programs out there that can do this but I doubt any of them are as customizable as the configuration files (in /etc) but then again you can do more customization with Windows in the text files too (but its like trying to read japanese backwords

). I use kcontrol for the look and feel since it is easier to see previews and such with a GUI but for most other things I like to use the configuration files. Its much easier to manage a couple text files then a couple programs. Although there are some other good GUI admin programs like bum (bootup manager), guarddog (firewall), and of course kcontrol (KDE control center).

Posted: **Wed Jun 08, 2005 11:24 pm**

I understand where your coming from CptnObvious999 and do agree to an extend (do this myself with ssh all the time).

But the theme of the thread isn't "What do you use yo config your system" but rather a discussion on GUI Admin tools for newbie/beginner/former Win32 user.

Command line and text files is fine for a user like most people in here, but we have to consider the majority of users. We are the minority.

I have yet to see a GUI Admn tool do what MCC can like mounting remote NFS shares and smb shares and local disks (plus all the little options for its fstab entry). Although I admit I haven't taken YaSt for a proper spin.

Posted: **Thu Jun 09, 2005 9:49 am**

I was doing a Fedora install last night on my girlfriend's machine (hint: be careful resizing LVM partitions or you'll wind up reinstalling your OS). Fedora has a fair number of GUI tools, but I don't use them much.

I was poking through the menus and found that the network configuration tool allows you to hack my /etc/hosts file (among other things). So I typed in the IPs and hostnames for all the systems on my network, and clicked save. The app crashed and dumped a lot of python errors into a window, then reminded me I should submit this info as a bug.

I fired up Vim and edited the file by hand. In about a minute I was done. I'm not ready for GUI administration.

I have to admit that the app to configure users/groups was nice, though. The firewall configuration tool is not bad if you don't want to do anything complicated.

Posted: **Thu Jun 09, 2005 10:13 am**

Cool. I am keen to take FC4 for a spin when it comes out (or is it already? )

Your post shows that Linux still has a bit to go to be ready for the general home user then. Or atleast any Linux besides Mandriva

Posted: **Thu Jun 09, 2005 11:46 am**

FC4 releases Monday. I've been running the test releases and it's pretty cool. Considering they've rebuilt the whole system with GCC 4.0 it's amazing how smooth it is. Gnome 2.10 is nice. Evince the new PDF viewer is nice.

As far as administration goes, there are plenty of GUI tools that also have command line versions, but no monolithic admin interface. I'm pretty sure you can get webmin for Fedora though. If it's not in base, it should be in extras.

Posted: **Thu Jun 09, 2005 11:49 am**

Gomer_X wrote:FC4 releases Monday.

I'm planning on upgrading my MythTV box as soon as the ATRPMS package repository gets updated with the ivtv drivers..

Posted: **Thu Jun 09, 2005 12:00 pm**

once Linux becomes an option to come on Dell's and HP's etc Novell, Mandriva and Red Hat will probly add more user friendly GUI admin apps but it will be a while till that happens.