system-config-network: why text mode?

[Todd And Margo Chester]

On 05/30/2011 06:29 AM, Greg Folkert wrote:
> On Sun, 2011-05-29 at 23:47 -0700, Todd And Margo Chester wrote:
>>> Hi All,
>>>
>>> On my various installs of Fedora Core 14 (Xfce 4.6.3) and 15 (Xfce 4.8.3) ,
>>> Xfce spin, I have noticed that "/usr/bin/system-config-network" always
>>> comes up in text mode, instead of the really cool graphics mode.  And the
>>> text mode really stinks.
>>>
>>> Am I missing something in the Fedora Code Xfce spins that forces
>>> system-config-network into that horrible test mode?
>>>
>>> Many thanks,
>>> -T
>> Figured it out.  There are two system-config-network's:
>>
>>       system-config-network-tui (text mode)
>>       system-config-network     (graphics mode)
>>
>> FC14+ only installs the "tui" version, which has
>> the name /usr/bin/system-config-network, which also
>> causes confusion.
>>
>> Solution:
>>       yum install system-config-network
>>
>> /usr/bin/system-config-network will now give you
>> the graphics mode.
>>
>> -T
>> Don't bother uninstalling "tui", it is a dependency for the
>> "non-tui" version.
> Just for the record, system-config-network has nothing to do with XFCE.
>
> Just for the record THIS REPLY has nothing to do with XFCE, but I must
> reply.
>
> If I had to run every system-confg-* with the GUI (aka X or what ever is
> the soup dujour), I'd immediately write a script to do the same thing in
> text mode.
>
> To that, I believe the GUI version is a scraper or operator for the text
> mode TUI version on these things. I could be wrong as I haven't looked
> at the innards.
>
> I admin servers 1500 miles from them, distance with using X isn't
> exactly a good thing (when using Comcast as your Broadband connection
> bleah). In a comparison of the GUI mode stuff to curses mode stuff the
> GUI stuff *EXTREMELY* heavy, laggy and slow to respond.
>
> Please Todd, don't forget the MANY Linux distributions are built upon
> Fedora Core or Debian... there is a reason they use text mode first and
> GUI second. Mainly, many machine may not even have a head on them, or if
> they do it might be an ancient monitor not able to display anything with
> greater than 640x480 or may even be a serial terminal... or other very
> low bandwidth console. Frankly, if Distros abandoned text mode, it would
> be a tragedy.
>
> Look at how pointy clicky Windows is and you have to decipher where in
> the registry to manage and then many times they are so cross referenced
> its not even funny.
And the pointy clicky dialogs leave tons of stuff out that you have to
manually enter into the registry.  Don't get me started on Terminal Services
> Heck even OSX can be managed completely with a terminal (albeit very
> clumsily in some places).
>
> XFCe is good at being light, but nothing is light enough to be
> responsive over 1500 miles of rather bland about the end users internet
> carriers. (TWTelecom, Level3, Cogentco, Comcast, Cox... etc)
>
> I'll shut up now.
Fascinating.  And I concure completely.  I administer several remote
servers long distance, although not 1500 miles away.  Most of it is
done over ssh (ssh -X).

In the above network configuration, I had already configured my
Ethernet card (ifcfg-p2pq) and wanted to give a look see in the
graphics tool.

I usually do not use system-config-xxxx in text mode as I find them
awful.  They leave tons of stuff out.  Graphic's mode leaves a
bunch of stuff out too, but not as much as their corresponding
text mode routines.  In system-config-network, things like
"PEERDNS" and "IPTOOLS", which I can not live without, are
nowhere to be found.

That being said, my weapon of choice is still the much maligned "vi".

Thank you for the thoughtful feedback,
-T

p.s. had I not worked exclusively with Xfce in Linux, I would have
seen Text Mode behavior in other GUI's and not thought it had
something to do with Xfce.

p.s.s  seems odd to me that KDE4 looks and feels, including
the crashing, like Windows 7.  I have a lot of customers with
W7 and it is awful.  I would posit that regedit in W7 is M$'s
substitute for vi.

p.s.s.s I still add and remove users from the command line.
Haven't found any GUI tools for it that are complete and that
I like.   Guess I am somewhat of a dinosaur.  :-)