[geeks] Mac definitions

[Phil Stracchino]

On 07/07/11 14:58, Mouse wrote:
> Not that I'm Jonathan.  But...
> 
>> [...] and forgo technologies that everyone else takes for granted.
>> (Example: last time I knew, Patrick Volkerding had declared that he
>> saw no reason why Slackware should ever support PAM.
> 
> Oh?  That's a remarkably sane point of view.  (One of the last things I
> want is security-critical programs doing dynamic loading of code, and
> that, as I understand it, is critical to PAM.)
> 
>> No LDAP auth for you!)
> 
> Huh?  What's that got to do with PAM?  There's no reason a non-PAM LDAP
> auth backend can't be (written and) linked into a static login(1).

It's my understanding that LDAP auth as implemented on Linux requires
PAM.  You could doubtless write your own implementation that didn't
require PAM, but honestly that's more trouble than I want to go to.

Of course, I've never actually gotten around to learning how to roll out
LDAP auth on my network anyway, which makes it rather moot.

But PAM was an example.  PAM, hal, udev, dbus, Gnome, ... on Gentoo I
can enable or disable any of them, globally, and automatically rebuild
everything affected by the change.  I can build in only the minimum
Gnome and KDE support I need for applications I actually use - K3B, for
example, is the best CD/DVD burning application out there right now, bar
none, and is the ONLY KDE app I use - without having to have all the
crap I don't want installed as well, and I only have to have Gnome or
KDE support built into the things I want to have it.  Everything that
doesn't need to deal with them can be left free of the bloat.  (If
memory serves, I have exactly two things built with required Gnome
support:  Firefox and Thunderbird.)


-- 
  Phil Stracchino, CDK#2     DoD#299792458     ICBM: 43.5607, -71.355
  alaric at caerllewys.net   alaric at metrocast.net   phil at co.ordinate.org
  Renaissance Man, Unix ronin, Perl hacker, SQL wrangler, Free Stater
                 It's not the years, it's the mileage.