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On 10/29/2013 05:41 PM, Miloslav Trmač wrote:
On Mon, Oct 28, 2013 at 3:18 PM, Simo Sorce <simo(a)redhat.com>
wrote:
> Sorry I am not sure what you mean here. If you mean the Server
> image will never have a graphical UI I don't think we are all on
> the same boat.
>
> Not that I want to install such UI by default, but not all people
> are comfortable managing headless servers, so the option almost
> certainly needs to be there.
<flame_proof_suit> The UNIX CLI is, over time, less and less an
acceptable interface.
It's good and efficient at what it has been originally designed
for (manipulating line-oriented text by experts - all those two-
and three-character commands and little languages).
It's not particularly great at interactive use when compared to an
efficient GUI (the command names and options inconsistent, many
and long; the configuration file format is even more inconsistent
than the command names and options; to use either of them one has
to either remember a lot of option names / config directives, or to
constantly read documentation).
It's not a particularly good programming environment either - no
IDE, no type checking / lint / code completion.
There are only two major interfaces worse than the UNIX CLI: A GUI
that was not designed to be efficient, and an application with a
GUI that doesn't have any programmable interface.
</flame_proof_suit>
I think we should, over time, move towards a "G"UI (whether local
or web is an implementation detail in this) for one-time use, and
an actual API used by an actual, current-era, programming language,
for automated use. The CLI will obviously stay, both because many
users are comfortable with it, and because we can't replace it
during this decade.
I agree with this completely, and it's one of the principal drivers of
the OpenLMI project[1] (full disclosure: I'm heavily involved in this
effort).
Under the hood, we have abstracted large amounts of the underlying
subsystems of the Linux system into a set of CIM object models and
exposed them as a stable API. We've then gone and built a scripting
environment (using the python language; nothing new to learn like
PowerShell) and cli "meta-command" builder[2].
Right now, we don't have any public GUI consuming this interface
because our research among Red Hat's customers strongly indicated that
real-world administrators care more about a scriptable interface than
they do a GUI. That's not to say that there is zero interest in such a
GUI, but that it's secondary to getting day-to-day, repetitive tasks done.
Also, to head off some of the NIH concerns that may be in your mind
after reading the earlier discussion about the system-config-* UIs,
the OpenLMI project is currently being developed jointly by several
companies, led by Red Hat but with contributors from Dell, SUSE and
others.
[1]
http://www.openlmi.org
[2]
http://www.openlmi.org/scriptdocs
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