I'm not going to defend "Unkillable"'s opinion, but over the time I have established an opinion about the various Linux GUI implementations.
On Linux, 99% of the server applications take their configuration from a config file. This requires you to do one of the following: 1. Get to know what the server application wants and use a text editor 2. Get a GUI app. Microsofts approach is just the opposite. Every application/service has a GUI configuration form and sometimes the care to document the config file or registry keys so that you can do it programmatically. By doing so, Microsoft has achieved an important target: The user doesn't really need to know how the program works in order to start working with it. This is the very thing that (IMHO) wasn't achieved on Linux. Exapmles: To configure Samba, you first need to know about swat. You need to be aware of its existance and configure xinetd to allow it to run. To configure Sendmail, you need LinuxConf or Webmin (Windows users would expect an icon saying "Sendmail configuration"). I like Linux <<because>> it can be configured by editing files. But even I don't like the fact that to configure an insignificant service such as DHCP, I have to read the entire man page. About workstations: Installation tools bring you to a point where you have many services running. Do you remember how you configured your Hebrew support? Isaac Aaron -----Original Message----- From: Hetz Ben-Hamo [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of Hetz Ben-Hamo Sent: Monday, December 10, 2001 6:47 PM To: Unkillable; [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: Making linux look harder than it is, Response On Monday 10 December 2001 18:25 pm, Unkillable wrote: > I would like to remind you, that linux is command line OS which based on > the unix and minix operating systems, knowing the GUI interface without > the command line interface, is like learning to run, when you dont even > know how to walk. Thats YOUR opinion. My brother (who doesn't know even what is "ls -l" is) is using KDE and Konqueror without any problem at all and without knowing Linux. > For people who wants to install linux on theire machine, installing linux > can be very simple, but it really take time to configure the machine for > your needs, so before runing to a meeting, and install linux, think that > you will have to spend a lot of your free time to configure linux, and just > to know how to K programming Gui, isnt enought, i suggest you to read > manuals, books, and articles about linux, read alot and you will finally > make your decision, linux was never nice to the newcomers, and will not be > in the close futer. > if you dont like the command line interface, you shouldn't install linux, Look - it all depends on the person. I will never tell a person to "go ahead and switch O.S" because it's "cool". I will tell someone something like "there is Linux, you might want to install it alongside your Windows partition, and play with it. It's not very easy to learn, but if you want to do some browsing, file-management, emails, and stuff like that - it can take few minutes to learn. Other stuff in Linux is more complicated and requires to sit and learn". > BTW: before you will install linux, you have to be familiar with the > concepts and slang used by linux and unix hackers, take some courses about > computers (not how to use word, or any other microsoft shits) and try to > find out what are the weaknesses in linux (Hebrew support, Games etc...), > and what is linux strong side (Power, runing webservers etc...). > if you are a serious programmer, linux can be your dream, or your > nightmare, and i encourge you not to learn Visual Basic or either Delphy, > they are both Platform limited, so you cant run them on other os than one > of microsoft products (monopol...). And where does THAT crap comes from? Yes, Linux is not easy, but I can point you to at least 3 companies in Israel who use KDevelop and they don't know shit about vi, emacs, etc.. Furthermore - I will encourage a person to learn delphi (it's spelled "delphi" and not "delphy") because Kylix runs very well under Windows & Linux, and it only takes you few moments to adapt the style from Delphi in windows to Kylix in Linux (btw: kylix 2 is out). As for Visual basic, I wouldn't recommend it, but if it's for web development, I would recommend PHP instead. > You can find information about the topics i mentioned before, on the web > (use google to find specific information). > > Hope i helped... No you didn't help at all! it's YOUR approach that scares people away from Linux. Linux can be very helpful if it's ALONGSIDE windows for newbies. You can boot to it, learn few things every few days, and go back to windows. I will NEVER recommend to anyone to simply rm -rf /mnt/windows and install Linux, unless it's servers and there is a full detailed plan of migration. Hetz Ben Hamo [EMAIL PROTECTED] ================================================================= To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word "unsubscribe" in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED] ================================================================= To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word "unsubscribe" in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
