misleading and hostile message in initial Raspbian setup

[mind-zz]

When selecting Advanced Options -> Hostname, I am greeted with the sentence "RFCs mandate that a hostname's labels may contain only the ASCII letters ...". This is patently false. RFCs do not "mandate" anything - they document consensus and suggest how to best interoperate with existing systems.

This philosophy is understood by anybody who is experienced in dealing with the technical aspects of Internet. However, as one of the goals of RPi is education, there will be many people for whom setting a hostname and taking charge of administering a node is a mind-opening experience, and this is one of the first screens they will see.

Especially at a time when governments everywhere are trying to contort the Internet into something they can control, language that leads people into thinking that the Internet only works due to some responsible authority setting "mandates" is a grave mistake.

Suggestion: change the wording to something like "For compatibility with other systems, a host name may contain only the letters ..."

[Stonie]

Hi,

That text was pulled verbatim off of wikipedia then slightly redacted: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hostname#Restrictions_on_valid_host_names

Perhaps update Wikipedia with something you deem more appropriate? and then provide a terse version for us to update raspi-config with?

Regards,
Andrew Stone.

[DrivenLogic]

@mind would you care to comment?