On 22 Aug 1999, Nathan Duehr wrote: > On Sat, 21 Aug 1999, Justin Wells wrote: > > > I think that Debian has a much better technology, but the average Debian > > user right now gets to stare at all the whirling gears in the install, > > and sometimes tinker with them, to get things going. The average RedHat > > user watches a status bar crawl across their screen. Or yet another > > metaphor: Debian has built a solid structure, but not yet done all > > the drywalling, or hung the front door in its frame. > > Perhaps the average Debian user WANTS to see what's going on and perhaps > tinker with it. I know I do. I grew up with computers where I could see > EXACTLY what they were doing, and most of my time was spent at the > so-called "Command Line Interface". As Windows and other graphical > systems became more and more popular, I found that they did some nice > things and allowed applications that needed to display lots of graphics a > better way to do so, but I started longing for the feedback given by the > programs written in a command-line era, very quickly. > > So with that in mind, some comments on your comments... (: > No flames. > [further comments cut]
This expresses very well what it is that attracted me to Debian in the first place. I came to it via Slackware and then RedHat. As a complete newbie I could never manage to install any new packages on Slackware; RedHat was a lot better but too often I found that rpm packages were broken or turned out to demand libraries etc. that I didn't have and didn't know where to look for. Once I got used to the Debian way of doing things, I liked it better. I suppose I should add that I came to Linux itself from DOS, not Windows, so I suppose I was already accustomed to the idea of a CLI. I'd been using 4DOS for years and, as I know realize, this has a lot of Unix features built into it, so Linux wasn't as much of a culture shock as it might have been. Anthony -- Anthony Campbell - running Linux Debian 2.1 (Windows-free zone) Book Reviews: http://www.achc.demon.co.uk/bookreviews/ "The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ, Moves on..." - Edward Fitzgerald (Rubaiat of Omar Khayyam)
