Public SourceMage Discussion List

[Andrew <afrayedknot AT thefrayedknot.armory.com>]

> 
> This is one thing I find with Sourcemage, that is I have to learn about 
> configuring things. An example is getting gphoto2 to download the photos 
> from my G3 camera, I have to manually setup the hotplug scripts so users 
> can access the camera. I'm not sure about security issues, but this is 
> one difference between Sourcemage and Mandrake, generally, things work 
> in Mandrake.

Generally the philosophy behind sourcemage is we do as little extra
configuration as possible and leave things in their default "out of the
box" state. Using sourcemage isnt supposed to be the same experience as
using mandrake, or windows for that matter, you have to have some idea
what your doing or what you want to do. For most of our users thats what
draws them here, it certainly drew me here, and its whats kept me here. By
not imposing extra configuration choices we provide a greater deal of
freedom. Given that freedom you have to accept that, yes, you do have
to configure your system yourself sometimes. Thats what we're about.

This is of course not to say that we shouldn't have some obvious "nice
to have" things in spells, like setting sane default permissions. But
generally, yes, you are expected to have to twiddle with things according
to your liking.

One of the reasons I dont use mandrake and wont /ever/ use mandrake is
because they go out of their way to put extra cruft and configuration in
the way of the actual software. Attempting to make everything work for
everyone out of the box yields tons of extra cruft to sort through when
you ever want to change something, since mandrake users typically dont
ever touch any configuration files this isnt a problem for them. Ive tried
numerous times to "fix" problems in mandrake and not gotten anywhere other
than pulling back layer after layer of extra code. For me I dont want
that cruft I want freedom, and I dont want someone making configuration
choices for me.

Whats funny, is actually the point of view of some linux laptop vendors is
that mandrake just likes to put as much stuff on their system as possible
without ever really testing any of it...but hey, dont take their word
for it, thats just their day job :)

-Andrew