On 03/02/16 04:13, Ian Zimmerman wrote:
> On 2016-02-02 12:58 +0000, Rainer Weikusat wrote:
>
>>> If you have the dedication to GUI and the resources of a global
>>> mega-corporation it is possible to make a similar GUI actually respect
>>> the under-lying settings ... but it is incredibly hard work, way
>>> beyond almost any organisation. OSX did achieve this
>>
>> Not at all, actually. It just means the front-end code has to work
>> directly with the backend config files
>
> But then the GUI code has to grok all the bazillions of config file
> formats out there, and perhaps worse, hardcode the knowledge which
> packages use which formats.
>

a comprehensive parsing of the bulk of unix networking configuration so that it
is presented in gui form, and can be comprehensively written to from the gui
with rather impressive auto configure in a way that a user with deep enough
technical knowledge of networking to make seriously unconventional demands yet
with zero unix specific knowledge can stay in gui and someone with minimal
networking knowledge but a little patience can achieve the more common outcomes
is a very big programming task. For that system to happily co-exist with very
unconventional settings done behind its back in the unix way is extremely
impressive, and a task that is beyond almost any organisation, not least because
it really isn't needed ... if you want full control purge the gui and use the
actual unix system, if you are able to understand networking enough to need full
control the unix system is not going to be hard to learn.

It can be made a lot more achievable expecting to erase old configs and work
from a known base ... but that is the awful solution gnome uses, it limits users
to whatever the gui provides, or forces a purge and go back to the actual unix
way. Tweaking behind its back is a disaster.

Taking a single networking problem rather than the whole shebang and doing that
properly is much much much more tractable problem, and has often been done.


Simon