[conspire] Web apps for a new Linux user (was: Risks of automation)

[Rick Moen]

Quoting Denny Yang (yangcdenny at gmail.com):

> Hi Rick
> 
> Hope you have been doing well.

Ca va!

> Can you please tell me which one, or two of these open source
> application(s) is / are suitable for Linux newbie?
> 
> If I don't ended up using it, I know at Least how to install it.

A few of those I actually don't know at all, and most of them I know
only from light readings or being a user.

Of the ones I know something about, exactly one of them is deliberately
simple to set up and operate:  DokuWiki.  This is one of two popular
wiki packages that do NOT require a back-end database as the datastore.
The other one (a piece of software I actually prefer) is MoinMoin, which
requires little more than just Python -- the language in which it's
written.

DocuWiki, by contrast, is written in PHP5.  For quite a number of
reasons, I personally would go rather far out of my way to avoid PHP
applications -- a long discussion I don't want to recap at the moment.

So, if you are just seeking a bit of experience running a public-facing
Web application, I'd frankly say try MoinMoin -- beyind either
Lighthttpd or nginx as the HTTP daemon.  For public-facing access, you
will also need (for all practical purposes[1] a static IP address and a
DNS identity for the IP.

Actually, as a last minute alternative, I notice you also listed
Etherpad Lite, which is an equally uncomplicated Web app, requiring only
node.js / server-side Javascript.  So, maybe you'd prefer to run that.

Several of the Web apps you listed, such as Joomla, Drupal, Moodle,
GitLab, osTicket, ownCloud, and WordPress, are quite complicated, which
I would certainly avoid as a new Web admin.  Also, many are in PHP.

On the matter of 'knowing how to install it', IMO it's important to use
_only_ packaged software from your Linux distro unless you absolutely
cannot avoid doing so.  It is a very common new-user error to rush to
the 'upstream' provider of software, particularly Web apps, rather than
using the distribution's packaging of that software.  I cautioned about
some of the disadvantages of making that error in this editorial
footnote, quite a few years ago:
http://linuxmafia.com/~rick/weatherwax.html#1



[1] Technically, for this limited purpose, you could get by with a
dynamic IP reachable on its public-facing port 80, the HTTP port, plus
DynamicDNS, but it's certainly a lot less trouble just having a static 
IP address, plus that would become mandatory for some additional uses 
you might wish to expand into later, such as running a public SMTP
e-mail daemon.