Re: Some personal linux observations

From: Wiseguy (noone_at_all.com)
Date: 01/21/05

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    "Mark Andereck" <andereck@everestkc.net> wrote in
    news:UE1Id.4$dW3.1@fe39.usenetserver.com:

    > The users have no equal and the user
    > base is more technical/capable than the microsoft base.

    As a generallity, yes the user base in more technical than the MS base.
    Probably because so many of us came from UNIX or VAX or even CP/M
    environments.

    > The OS is free, the book is not. While there are dozens of great how
    > too's on linux, a book specific to the distribution is indespensible
    > to operate the system.

    Unless you happen to be a computer scientist, in which case you can
    usually intuitively guess what the distro is doing behind the scenes.

    > This is in contrast to MS oses which are gui
    > first and intuitive, the neat command line stuff in windows is mostly
    > undocumented, except for obscure KB articles.

    One of my big bitches about the M$ environment is that the command line
    stuff isn't well documented. And I have to slightly disagree by stating
    that the gui is not wholely intuitive. I spend way too much time trying
    to figure out which point-n-click to change a system setting, but I
    prefer a command line interface for system admin work so my frustration
    should be reasonable.

    > Man pages leave much interpretation up to the user.

    Depends on your base level of knoweledge...and whether you are thinking
    in a windoze or a UNIX mindset.

    > More real word
    > specific examples would go a long way towards understanding the many
    > options programs have and how they interact. The develpers might
    > consider explaining their programs to their mother and then have her
    > write the manual for us first time non-developer users, or is it just
    > me?

    I'll never happen. I'll probably get nuclear flamed for this comment
    but open source developers are usually more interested in expressing
    their intellectual creativity than in documenting their work. Lack of
    standardized and reproducable development methods are my single biggest
    bitch about open source. Often times open source developers believe
    their only responsibility is in making sure their code compiles and that
    real testing and documentation should be up to someone else.

    > Fedora should really consider distributing Webmin as Redhat did. I was
    > a very frustrated user until I discovered port 10000.

    gui system admin is a bad idea. a gui will never allow extremely fine
    grained control over the system. learn to use the command line for
    admin tasks.

    > I readily admit
    > my limitations and desire to know the conf files better, but webmin
    > makes some things so easy..I was intimidated by VI. Now I can navigate
    > and edit better with VI, but its still unintuitive to me. I have spent
    > many hours just cat'ing my configuration files to see if I can
    > understand what they do.

    Yeah. I've been in UNIX since the 80s and I share your frustration with
    vi. I can use it but prefer an X11 based graphical editor that isn't
    mode oriented.

     
    > A color terminal is essential to the beginner who is used to file
    > extensions under ms! Symbolic links? Executable text files without a
    > bat extension? Holy Cow! Its still a bit frustrating at times to know
    > when to cd or cat ....maybe its me.

    the ls command supports environmental variables to color tag different
    types of files. Look into it. I am actually annoyed by the different
    colors so I disable them.

     
    > Compiling programs isn't scary unless something goes wrong. Portabilty
    > of code is great for everybody as the support just gets better as more
    > people use the program, but this portability means its not going to
    > always work out of the box and when errors occur during compile time
    > how the hell do I fix them without a strong C background?? Help!

    If you cannot program in C and don't understand makefiles then you
    don't...the most you can do is try to get help from the project
    development team and see whether anyone pays you any attention.

    > Where do all these smart users come from?

    The modern day hacker is similar to the "gear heads" of 20 years ago.
    There are some folks who don't have a life outside of computers.

    > One click, no dependency installation isn't here yet, and I wish it
    > was. I have both apt-get and yum installed and they are kick ass for
    > installing applications for me, but when apt says I need a perl module
    > for my installed webmin and it can't install it and I have that perl
    > module installed how do I fix the dependency tree? Its the little
    > things....

    Dependency problems can actually be a big issue. The only way to get
    around them is to exclusively use a commercial distro and refrain from
    installing software from sourcecode.

    > Where the hell is the book on X? The only one I can find is nearly 20
    > years old and out of print..why all the different file locations for
    > X? Does anybody understand what it all does and where to go to fix it
    > if it doesn't work the way it should? X can be a mean bitch.

    It has been my experience that the problems in X are usually related to
    the complicated desktop environment software run over top of X. X
    itself is relatively benign and simple to understand. It is when
    different environments start customizing X that things get messy. X
    itself is just a set of protocols that define how the graphical
    environment works. The X spec doesn't make and requirement as to look
    and feel. that is up to the window manager or widget set.

    > The media writes often about linux progress. Does the average linux
    > user care about mainstream acceptance?

    for the home hacker, probably not, but for the guy who wants to make it
    into a career then hell yes we care about mainstream acceptance.

    > I'm sure several would love
    > more manuafactuer hardware driver/app support, but isn't there
    > something about linux that makes one feel kinda like an outlaw? or is
    > it outcast?

    Or just tired of paying our "Bills".

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