DistributionWatch Review: Red Hat Linux 6.1
Using Linuxconf
Kevin Reichard
Monday, December 6, 1999 01:33:09 PM
The assumption here is that you'll be doing most of your work under
X, a not unfair assumption these days, one that should be followed by the
rest of the Linux development community. It's one thing for us old UNIX hacks
to feel comfortable at a command line for most of our work; it's another thing
for us to expect that less-experienced casual users remember which UNIX
commands to use and where text-based configuration files are stored.
That's why linuxconf may be the most important piece of programming within
Red Hat Linux. Basically, linuxconf is a graphical outline-based tool that
works like a Windows configuration tool in presenting a single face to the many
different operating-system configuration chores.
There are some in the Linux community that grumble about linuxconf, with
the chief gripe being that it's too complex for regular use. We hold the
opposite view: it's so incredibly convenient to have all the important
configuration centralized in one location. In fact, there's precious little
that can't be configured with linuxconf. While linuxconf isn't new in Red Hat
Linux 6.1, it has been expanded to include more areas, focusing on
network connections and Internet services. (Alas, it lacks the power to
configure sound cards. Too bad, as by and large Red Hat Linux does the best job
in the Linux world of working with sound cards.) Specifically, linuxconf covers
server configurations (DNS, Apache, mail, FTP, news), user accounts, Internet
connections (modems, PPP, routing, NIS), LILO, system logs and various
services. Having a different configuration screen for every aspect of Linux is
not a good thing for users (who really don't want to be moving between X,
GNOME, KDE, linuxconf, and text-based interfaces) and centralizing and
standardizing configuration is always a good idea.
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