Okay, there’s something important you all need to know about me. If you’ve talked to me for any length of time, you’ll notice I’m very evangelistic about certain things. Let’s clear the air right now. If you talk to me currently, there are 4 things I’m evangelistic about. (This list changes every few months.) Here are the current items on the list:
1) Treo 600/650
2) Tivo
3) DirectAdmin control panel
4) IBI
If you know me, you’ll know that I love these 4 things, and depending on how well you know me, you will slowly be convinced to try at least 2 of the 4. After all, how many of you have Treos now because of me? Tivos? (That’s at least 15 people all told.)
My evangelism about certain things bugs some of you, and I know that, but take this to heart: 1) I’m only going to recommend something if I think you would be interested in it; and 2) I obsessively compare everything, and nothing gets put on my evangelism list unless it’s so radically awesome that I simply could not imagine living without it. So listen up! 
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November 28th, 2004 at 12:13 am
Yes. It is her fault that I own a Treo, use DirectAdmin, and really want a TiVo. ALL. HER. FAULT.
November 28th, 2004 at 6:09 am
Ok, so convince me why I should use DirectAdmin when Webmin is available, open source and free.
As a side note, here are the things I am evangelist about:
1) Linux
2) Open source
3) Anime (japanese animations)
4) PDAs in general:)
November 29th, 2004 at 3:31 am
Lets see, I agree about the Tivo and can see the use of IBI if I was a business owner (I’m not). As for the Treo and DriectAdmin color me skeptical.
I’m not (yet) a big fan of PDAs or PDA/phones. I’ve always prefered a paper organizer. Most of the PDA phones have the added handicap that they are far bigger than I really want a phone to be. That said I’m sure that with better software my Nokia 6800 would make a decent PDA (but I would settle for a SSH client). I suppose once I’m working again I’ll try a Palm device and see what all of the fuss is about.
As for DirectAdmin while it is a slick looking web administration interface I have to agree with Francis that I don’t see what other than the pretty icons it has over webmin. For that matter as a rather experienced sysadmin my interfaces of choice are a shell prompt, vi, and emacs.
November 29th, 2004 at 9:16 am
It seems ces and I are polar opposites.
I use DirectAdmin and webmin together, because webmin doesnt do a lot of what directadmin does, and in some cases vice versa. I despise having to do everything in text files.
I hate working on paper. It offers no flexibility anymore until you scan it in, even then its not that useful. Guess some people just refuse to change with the times.
November 29th, 2004 at 12:29 pm
Hi guys,
Interesting discussion going on here. Re: DirectAdmin vs. Webmin… the choice is mostly important if you have a hosting company. DirectAdmin does a lot of things on the user end that Webmin/Usermin doesn’t, with perhaps the most important ability being the ability to create resellers. This may not be important to you if you’re just giving people FTP access, but it’s critical to those of us who want users to be able to create their own domain names.
DirectAdmin is also 100% PHP and skinnable, which means you can toss PHP commands in any file and redesign the skin with a PHP script. It’s very useful and, IMHO, is much cleaner than the Perl/CGI backend of Webmin.
I can definitely see your point if you’re just maintaining a web server for yourself; I’ve used Webmin in these situations before. But if you’re offering hosting to others (either as a business or as a hobby), DirectAdmin is well-worth the investment.
-Erica
November 29th, 2004 at 12:46 pm
Erica seems to have hit it on the head, the reseller feature is vital. It handles a lot on my server that I don’t have the time to, and allows me to host sites with their own domains a lot easier. If I had my way though, I’d still have cPanel. I like things “automagicly” done for me.
November 29th, 2004 at 4:06 pm
Erica, that is too true =p How many things are you trying to or have gotten me to try in the past few months? Lets see:
You insist on a Treo, five days later I have one.
You comment on how I should come to San Jose, a week later I’m at SFO feeling very peculiar.
A Tivo is -very- close to arriving at my house =p
Need I go on? Voodoo magic! Mmn, teh magic is still being worked o_O;
November 29th, 2004 at 7:03 pm
Don’t get me wrong, I do see the value of web based administration interfaces, particularly when you expect the UNIX clueless to be doing some of the work.
I’m really not knowledgable enough about either webmin or DirectAdmin to know what the strengths and weaknesses of each are.
The extent I’ve used webmin is mostly so I could have our helpdesk who only really knew windows handle basic system administration tasks such as adding and removing users.
For me personally I’m pretty old school in that I’d really rather do things with command prompts, config files, and scripts. Probably due to the fact that I date from the days when having an X terminal was a rare thing and the Internet meant email, usenet news, FTP, and Telnet (no web or even gopher yet). I’m also one of those sickos who thinks writing their own rulesets for Sendmail is fun.