Quick survey

[John Seth]

Hey all, I've come up against some conflicts where I work for an unfortunate
living. My chief systems administrator is training a linux newbie for a
backup systems admin position to himself and myself since our Network Admin
left the company.  In doing so, he installed Fedore Core 1 (Yarrow, latest
release) and is now showing him how to install a server, and compile
programs.  No big deal, usually....

My problem is this: normally, servers do not need to be installed with their
GUI installers, doing so, usually installs X-Windows components onto systems
with need for them, at least with RedHat. The trainee is a newbie, so I'm
not too concerned, the fact that they should know both ways is best... but
my sys admin won't show him text install for the reason "Who doesn't install
with the GUI on a server these days? What does it matter if X is on a server
or not?".

I feel 1) it's a waste of disk space, 2) if it is running on a server,
that's increased memory, cpu & resource hogging and 3) security issues could
compromise the server but wouldn't if X wasn't installed.

The last thing is, he's showing the trainee how to compile programs. No big
deal again. It's good to know how to run your own ./configure & make
statements.  However, being this is RH/Fedora, I feel he should also teach
him how to use things like "RPM --build" and learn about things like the
.spec files needed for RPM based systems.  Again, I was met with "why? who
cares if it's RPM or not? Just overwrite the old RPM with the new compiled
program...".  Hmm... so having, for example, httpd-1.3.28-devel-48.7.rpm
installed, and compiling Apache 2.0.48 and installing it over the top of the
old RPM installation.  I see problems with this, maybe not Apache, but other
programs.

Being I've now written a novel to the mailing list ;) How about you tell me
what you do with your systems... do you use the gui install? do you install
Xwin to a server? why? Since I don't feel like spamming the mailing list,
feel free to visit my website where I can more easily tally the results. 
Mind you, it's a quickly thrown up survey...

http://www.phoenixwing.com/ has the survey.  Thanks for listening to my
gripes ;)

 - Tony

-- 
<? print(pack("c*", 74,117,115,116,32,/* Tony Evans                  */
 65,110,111,116,104,101,114,32,80,72, /* Linux/Web Implementation    */
 80,32,72,97,99,107,101,114,46,10));  /* http://www.phoenixwing.com/ */ ?>