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Hmm it's tactical they haven't shown a flip3D screenshot.

The irony of the whole thing is the fact that Solaris used to be bashed by Linux users as 'old' and 'archiac'; from the limited experience so far, it seems that Sun is working to improve Solaris to lower the bar of entry.

I think the day when you start seeing small businesses deploy Linux, then it would have made a successful entrace.

Eeeh? You haven't used Linux for this I take it? Setting up a webserver in Linux is a click'n'point operation and has been so for years. System -> Administration -> Services, and click in the checkbox to the left of "Webserver". Webserver up and running.

Eeeh? You haven't used Linux for this I take it? Setting up a webserver in Linux is a click'n'point operation and has been so for years.

No it isn't.

System -> Administration -> Services, and click in the checkbox to the left of "Webserver". Webserver up and running.

Where did you pick this up from, and do you really believe this actually gets a web server up and running?

ROFL...since when has setting up Apache been like this? Excuse me but starting a service and actually "setting" up a webserver are two completely different things. To even imply that Apache could be as simple is just plain misleading.

the day you see a nice GUI raid tool for Linux, hell would of frozen over

EVMS is great, and it's more than just a RAID tool. It also manages partitioning, logical volumes, filesystems, and clustering--the entire storage stack. It has CLI, ncurses, and GTK interfaces.

The problem is that not everybody knows about these sorts of things, and the distributions don't always shove them in your face. Linux server management is pretty good, but it could be significantly better. I disagree with your notion that there's something about Linux that makes it unlikely that GUI management tools will become more pervasive. Linux will get better tools, they will come quickly, and most will be developed by commercial vendors that are pushing Linux servers like crazy. IBM develops EVMS, and I bet there's more where that came from.

A GUI on a server?
to setup a webserver or shares?

I am really glad with httpd.conf and/or other config files. Once you take the tine to understand them your possibilities are endless and your power is unlimited.

After that you hopefully will understand that GUI are
only slowing you down and underpower you.

Most home user don't want to take time to understand, nor they want endless possibilities or power. They want a quick and simple webserver that just works. This isn't aimed at sysadmins running real webservers, this is for home users who have no interest in learning what httpd.conf is, but want to host their own blog and let people see their vacation photos.

Sure you can counter with comments like "lusers who can't even be bothered to learn how to edit httpd.conf with vi over ssh shouldn't be running servers" and similar popular statements, but the truth is there is a market for this sort of product and MS is filling it. Linux could easily fill it, but no one has done the work.

"Sure you can counter with comments like "lusers who can't even be bothered to learn how to edit httpd.conf with vi over ssh shouldn't be running servers" and similar popular statements, but the truth is there is a market for this sort of product and MS is filling it."

Sadly, you're right, but the problems caused by the missing education (knowledge about server setup, security management, ports, firewalls etc.) will lead to increasing abuse of these home servers. They will be taken over very fast by the usual means (trojans, viruses etc.) and will then be used for illegal actions, such as spamming the Internet or transmitting / storing contents like child porn or instructions for terroristic attacs, maybe. As you might know, this is what "Windows" boxes are used today for, without any notice of their owners.

I cannot follow your argument "market for this", because there are free web services that offer nearly all the functions you mentioned. The trend would be to go away from these centralized servers and have servers in every home instead, creating new demands for name server and routing services.

Having a look at all regards of computing today, the barrier to be able to do something is lowering step by step. While desktops were available for everyone, servers were not. Now servers are available for everyone. Which results this will lead to... we'll see.

One point I'd like to mention: Showing asterisks when entering a password on a server that has a certain security level is a "no-go", instead, nothing should be displayed, but this could lead the (not so educated) user to assume that nothing is entered. Just read this one:

I'm a network administrator at a local school district, and I get some doozies.

Teacher: "My keyboard is broken."
Me: "What is it doing to make you think it's broken?"
Teacher: "When I go to type my password it doesn't type it right. No matter what I type, it's always a little star."
Me: "Yes, it is supposed to do that."
Teacher: "Well, how does it know if I get it right or wrong if it's always little stars!?"
Me: "It displays the asterisks so no one else can see your password."
Teacher: "That is stupid. I hate Bill Gates."

:-)

Source: http://www.rinkworks.com/stupid/cs_keyboards.shtml

"Linux could easily fill it, but no one has done the work."

I think there are GUI frontends for server configuration, but they do not reside in a colourful paper box in a local software store.

there is always webmin

and for shares, i could have sworn that kde have samba shares integrated so that similar to windows you can just right-click and check properties of a folder to manage shares...

Of course, it never will, and the day you see a nice GUI raid tool for Linux, hell would of frozen over (or Earth to that matter, given it's only getting hotter).

If you just need basic file serving, have a look at FreeNAS (http://www.freenas.org/). It's all configured via a web interface. Serves files via CIFS, ftp, NFS, AFP, iSCSI target, etc. You can easily setup RAID via the web interface... for many people it is a "plug and play" file server.

It obviously lacks some of the bells and whistles of it's non-free MS competition, but I can see it meet general media storage and backup needs.

I was just going to mention webmin, sadly removed from Debian/Ubuntu repos because of no maintainer (although there are .debs at webmin.org), and Freenas as alternatives to this, and maybe rsync + rdiff-backup and an LVM module for webmin. As for ACL, you can use them on Linux (google it), if people weren't aware.

Edited 2007-04-30 05:32

True, but I think it is somewhat negative to say it never will. Linux distributions are going from strength to strength, and hopefully KDE 4 will make shares more easy than they are in KDE 3.5.*.

Try the stuff available at contribs.org.

It's been there for years (it used to be called SME Server). There are lots of similar linux-based products in the market. I will let you do your own research, but there are lots of them.