[Discuss] webmin

[blu at nedharvey.com (Edward Ned Harvey (blu))]

> From: Mark Woodward [mailto:markw at mohawksoft.com]
> 
> > A powerful gui that dumbs down your admin tasks with all sorts of pitfalls
> and shortcomings that enable you to shoot yourself in the foot.
> 
> That's true of all GUI's atop of complex paradigms.  

Only if the GUI doesn't fully implement the underlying layer, or if the GUI lacks error detection/correction that affects the underlying layer.

But any gui that is fully featured simply gives access and control to the same stuff in a format that doesn't require memorization, and uses geography / real estate / visual aids, that accelerate your productivity.  I can name, for example, the IP address configuration GUI.  It gives you full access to the underlying stuff, without need to memorize which files contain those configs, nor what the precise syntax is for each of those files.  And of course, "those files" is a set of files which is prone to change from rev to rev of the OS.

But since this topic is about webmin, my experience with webmin is just like my experience with ASDM.  It neither implements the full featureset under the hood, nor does a problem-free implementation of the stuff that implements.  You try to make some change, and when you hit Apply, it throws some error back at you...  Some of what you were doing might have been applied, and some might not...  And various other problems.