Re: EDUCATIONAL LINUX THREAD -NEW

[Malonowa <malonowa@wanadoo.fr>]

Rob Bellville wrote:

> Ah, here is a point I'm fond of promoting. I am a firm believer in THIN
> SERVERS. After administering numerous NT servers I became even more
> convinced that a server should do one or two things very well rather than
> supply 10-20 services. Not only does it eliminate the single point of
> failure but it *can* make administration easier since everything is in
> small bite sized chunks. Again, this is where Linux excels. It can take a
> couple of 486 machines and turn them into an elaborate set of network
> resources.
>

When I was at school (here's where you might be able to calculate my age) we
had a network based on BBC Micros. For those who aren't familiar with these,
they were 8bit with 32K memory and no hard disks.

I ended up being in charge of this network since my skills in computing
surpassed those of the teachers - as was often the case in schools those days.
These were the days of the young wizz kids.

This network was based around a few of these computers with double disk drives.
Each drive machine could store 400K.

Now you couldn't run a printer server and a file server at the same time. These
computers could only do one job.

We ran a successful network with about 100 stations. Just shows what you can
do. I think we're all spoiled with the technology we have nowadays and in some
cases it might be better to get back to the old ways of doing things.

They say that Russian programmers write very good optimized code because during
the cold war they didn't have the latest technology and therefore learned to do
the best with what they had. That's precisely what we should be doing and I
think generally this was one of Linux's philosophies.

I also have the philosophy when developing software that you should give people
what they need and not fill programs with junk that they'd rarely use. It's
better to have smaller programs that work efficiently than monsters that do
everything. This would tie in with using older machines.

I have a fear nowadays that environments such as GNOME and KDE whilst very good
are becoming monsters. We have to download so many libraries to use the
software that's written for them and I for one only use a small fraction of the
services they offer.

We can run a great risk in trying to produce the "best" technologies but we
must all remember that software and hardware systems are only tools. They're
there to solve problems and whatever we implement should solve problems not add
redundant functionality that might solve a problem that doesn't exist yet or
may exist in some very obscure circumstances.

Of course, if such obscure circumstances were in need of solutions then
specifically designed systems/software should be developed for them.

I hope what I'm trying to say here makes sense to people,

Roman.