[00:16] <LaserJock> Lns: the problem with red hat's tools are they are fairly red hat-specific
[00:16] <Lns> LaserJock: sure, but that's the case for any distro mostly
[00:16] <Lns> no reason to avoid making it more distro agnostic
[00:16] <LaserJock> sure, it just makes it non-trivial to use their stuff
[00:17] <Lns> unless people put the pressure on them to split up parts of the app so others can use it
[00:17] <LaserJock> i.e. I believe the Desktop Team has already looked at it and said it was iffy if it'd be worth using over starting from scratch
[00:17] <Lns> jeez...that's too bad
[00:17] <Lns> well at least we can use their UI? =)
[00:18] <LaserJock> long term it sounded like maybe that's what will end up happening (using their tool)
[00:18] <nubae> most opensuse stuff is totally gpl
[00:18] <nubae> have u looked at some of their stuff?
[00:18] <LaserJock> but it was going to take more work than the Desktop Team had
[00:18] <LaserJock> yes
[00:18] <nubae> I know its kinda integrated with yast
[00:18] <LaserJock> not me personally
[00:18] <nubae> but user managament might be able to be ripped out
[00:18] <LaserJock> but I've talked with people who've looked at it
[00:18] <LaserJock> and Yast was worse than Fedora's stuff for being distro-specific
[00:19] <LaserJock> the question might be how much we actually need
[00:19] <nubae> I believe that... it works so well, it has to be reallly tied into the system
[00:19] <LaserJock> if we want to reuse lots of code then it makes sense
[00:19] <LaserJock> but if we only want a small part it's maybe more trouble than it's worth
[00:19] <LaserJock> either way it's not trivial but really needs to be worked on
[00:19] <nubae> though yast used to be horrible, but one of the great things is its usable from teh command line as much as from the gui
[00:20] <nubae> we'd need something like that for ubuntu... a terminal window based thingy a la midnight commander
[00:20] <nubae> or gui based
[00:21] <nubae> that way it works great for server and desktop environments
[00:21] <LaserJock> right yes
[00:21] <LaserJock> that's why you have backend scripts/library
[00:21] <LaserJock> and then you can have either GUI or CLI UI
[00:21] <nubae> the real problem comes with integration with 3rd party stuff though like ldap and samba
[00:22] <nubae> both of which are pretty much required
[00:22] <LaserJock> yep
[00:22] <nubae> and both of which are horrible with ubuntu
[00:22] <Lns> well the thing is there's no "standard" for ldap groups, thats why you have so many different implementations
[00:22] <nubae> I mean really really horrible
[00:22] <LaserJock> Users and Groups is not great for that at all
[00:22] <nubae> yeah but both redhat and novell seem to have done a good job
[00:22] <Lns> any gui attempt to be completely general would fail at the hands of "you might as well craft your own from the shell"
[00:22] <nubae> just picking one works ok I think
[00:23] <LaserJock> yes, they have the luxury of having paid peiole
[00:23] <LaserJock> *people
[00:23] <nubae> sure but if their stuff is gpl, it can be copied and reused
[00:23] <Lns> well it doesn't necessarily help the overall community when you tie your tools to your distro..but whatareyagonnado i guess
[00:23] <LaserJock> except it's often distro-specific
[00:23] <nubae> I thik there its just a vanity thing... ubuntu wants to do its own thing
[00:23] <LaserJock> we have the GPL'd software
[00:23] <Lns> nubae: nah, *everyone* wants to do their own thing
[00:24] <nubae> sure, I'm just saying thats not always a good thing
[00:24] <nubae> reinventing the damn wheel all the time
[00:24] <LaserJock> the Ubuntu Server Team is looking a lot at ldap/samba I believe
[00:24] <LaserJock> yeah, it sucks to have to keep doing this stuff over and over
[00:24] <LaserJock> part of that whole "Linux is choice" bit
[00:25] <Lns> if only there were GNU gui tools
[00:25] <Lns> of course they'd probably all be written in the oldest widget set imaginable ;)
[00:25] <LaserJock> ncurses
[00:25] <Lns> remember linuxconf?
[00:26] <Lns> i'd favor ncurses over gui
[00:27] <LaserJock> I like gui's :-)
[00:27] <LaserJock> or just plain CLI
[00:27] <LaserJock> I never really got into curses stuff very much
[00:28] <LaserJock> granted most of my "UI" development has been curses ;-)
[00:28] <nubae> ncurses and gui
[00:29] <nubae> why choose?
[00:29] <LaserJock> my lovely data acquisition program is curses + pgplot
[00:29] <Lns> The catch 22 is, once you have a 'universal gui' you become monolithic in nature, and that hinders development of new, possibly better ways of doing things
[00:29] <LaserJock> you don't have to be universal
[00:29] <LaserJock> just flexible
[00:29] <nubae> damn damn... have to wake up in 3 hours... train ride at 5 in the morning :-(
[00:29] <nubae> laters....
[00:29] <LaserJock> nubae: cya
[00:29] <Lns> hahaha, by nubae =)
[00:29] <Lns> bye*
[00:30] <Lns> LaserJock: I guess so, huh.. it's all about 'parting out' the functions so anyone can get to them
[00:30] <LaserJock> I think a lot of it is looking at what you're doing and especially the assumptions you're making
[00:31] <Lns> yeah..cater to your environment
[00:31] <LaserJock> if you're doing something and you need to make a big assumption
[00:31] <LaserJock> you should perhaps look at a more generalized approach
[00:32] <LaserJock> but for sure there's a balance
[00:32] <Lns> of course
[00:32] <LaserJock> if you overgeneralize it's no use to anybody because you haven't gotten anything done :-0
[00:32] <Lns> hopefully most of the generalization can be done 'under the hood'
[00:32] <Lns> hence the gnu tools we already have, and have had for ages
[00:33] <LaserJock> a lot of the unix/GNU philosophy has been to have small programs that do a specific task very well
[00:34] <LaserJock> and then later writing "glue" that pulls together the small tasks to do what you ultimately want to do
[00:34] <Lns> yep
[00:34] <Lns> +100
[00:34] <LaserJock> so I'd like to start with "add a user", "remove a user", "modify a user" ....
[00:35] <LaserJock> then as things build we can use a CLI and/or GUI to put it all together into a Control Panel type thing
[00:35] <LaserJock> of course that's assuming we ever get that far ;-)
[00:36] <Lns> so maybe write scripts to do the specifics we want (mass user add/modify/remove, etc.) that are simply wrapping around useradd/mod/del
[00:36] <Lns> in the spirit of those underlying tools
[00:37] <LaserJock> right, that would be a first step
[00:37] <Lns> then making a gui around THAT would be that much easier
[00:37] <LaserJock> or perhaps use a python library instead of useradd/mod/del directly
[00:38] <LaserJock> we know how to add/remove/modify users individually
[00:38] <LaserJock> what we're missing is how to do it on a mass scale
[00:38] <LaserJock> and from there how to do it in a user/teacher/admin friendly way
[00:38] <Lns> sure..well what about the simple 'for i in foo' method?
[00:39] <Lns> i dunno, i'm thinking on a higher level than i should be probably
[00:39] <Lns> i dont' know much of anything about the underlying libs
[00:39] <LaserJock> well, you just need to check your assumptions
[00:39] <LaserJock> useradd, etc. don't do LDAP, right?
[00:40] <LaserJock> so you're assuming local users, but given a set of usernames and passwords it exactly a for i in foo
[00:41] <Lns> right...well you have to start somewhere
[00:41] <Lns> you can't assume everyone will use ldap either ;)
[00:41] <LaserJock> yep
[00:41] <LaserJock> so that's why I want to collect the scripts that people are actually using
[00:41] <Lns> ldap users is such a mess
[00:41] <LaserJock> then we can find commonalities and generalize
[00:41] <Lns> yeah
[00:41] <Lns> for sure
[07:54] <erosa> Hi.I think it'd b a good idea to have al least a mentor in https://bugs.launchpad.net/~edubuntu-bugs/+mentoring
[07:56] <erosa> I have the will to learn and help, but the few tries I made didn't have any sucess.
[08:44] <tall> hello.
[08:44] <tall> is this a place for technical question about open office in Ubuntu 9.04 ?
[08:45] <alkisg> tall, I think it's more suited for #ubuntu
[08:46] <alkisg> But you can also ask here, I don't think anyone would mind, I just don't know if you'll have enough feedback :)
[15:52] <stgraber> highvoltage: ping
[18:26] <jonathan1> Has anyone recently upgraded to 9.04 with an on-board intel graphics chipset and have the graphics go crazy.  My graphics, and I am using that term loosely because it could be the video driver, looks like it it is only covering the top 2 inches of my monitor and it repeats a good half dozen times across.  Any ideas how to fix it anyone?
[18:32] <jonathan1> I understand that ubuntu, in general, has a long running issue with intel chipset.  Was curious if anyone else had the same problem that I did/do.