The things I hate most about Linux is the attitude that I have nothing
better to do than to learn everything about a tool in order to use it.

Firat of all I agree with you almost 100%. Tools in general and Linux in particual should be much easier to use then they are now.

Case in point.  RPM -- the cutting edge of Unix ease of use.  To
quote from the guys who invented it:

I have fallen in love with both APT and RPMFIND. When I get a security bulleting from REDHAT or CERT i just do a apt-get bind or rpmfind  bind and woila rpmfind actually locaes, downloads and installs the latest version bind. I have never used any other OS which made it so easy to not only install but upgrade software. All and all I find using RPMs much easier then downloading/unzipping/installing/rebooting cycle of windows.

to buy a $39.95 book on now to install Apache or Samba or whatever.

Once again installing apache or samba is pretty much a no brainer it's the configuring that's a pain in the butt. I can install samba in 30 seconds (rpm -i samba-x.x.x.rpm) but sharing the volumes setting the authentication protocols etc that's the pain. Same with apache. SWAT or Linuxconf or webmin are all OK but really don't go far enough.

Interbase should be so simple to install and use that people
will use it in preference to their VCRs.  If they need to hire
a DBA, we haven't done our job.  If they need to hire a geek
to install it, we haven't done our job.  If they need a system
administrator to tune it, we haven't done our job.

These are all laudable and noble goals. You are to be congratulated for even having this attitude towards the products you make. It's a rare thing in todays marketplace.
Having said all that though, as a long time database developer I must say that I am pessimistic about it ever happening. People just don't understand databases in an intuitive manner. Relational databases are counterintuitive by nature. I guess it's the same with web servers and samba too. These are complicated things and as I tell my clients frequently it's a miracle it works in the first place. They don't and probably never will understand normalization, indexing, nulls etc.

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             Tim Uckun

      Mobile Intelligence Unit.

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   "There are some who call me TIM?"

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