Re: Linux alternative to m$ abscess?

From: Jean-David Beyer (jdbeyer_at_exit109.com)
Date: 08/29/04 

Date: Sun, 29 Aug 2004 07:35:20 -0400

Sean wrote (in part):

> Maybe you think you are a superior being by virtue of your highly
> skilled cli abilities.

I see the advantages of a CLI for some things, and a GUI for others.
For example, I greatly prefer Mozilla to Lynx for browsing web sites as
they are constructed these days. And I greatly prefer a CLI for some other
things (where a simple shell script will do what would take hours of
pointing and clicking with a GUI).

> I'll give you a hint, you are a dinosaur.

I suppose I am, even though that remark was not directed to me. It might
as well be.

When I was running Windows 95, I bought Microsoft Office Professional. I
paid extra for the "Professional" where the only difference was that it
included Microsoft Access. Now I had a lot of database experience (I even
wrote a relational dbms for Unix in the late 1970s). But I failed to get a
particular (fairly simple) database designed in Access because it
complained that the relationships I tried to impose among the relations
were incorrect. I gave up and got Linux and had no trouble defining the
very same database in postgreSQL. I abandonned postgreSQL because in 1998
or so, it was too buggy. I switched to Informix where I had no trouble
defining that same database and not much trouble converting it from
postgreSQL. When I upgraded from Red Hat Linux 5.0 to RHL 6.0, Informix
quit. And Informix would not support it on RHL 6.0, so I moved to IBM DB2
UDB V6.1. Here too, I had no trouble getting the database defined and
converted from Informix. Now all these database management systems, except
Microsoft Access, ran CLIs and if they had a GUI, I never noticed.

> And yes the CLI has it's advantages, but the earth is moving toward the
> gui and you had better move with it or you will be extinct.
>
I do not doubt you are right, but in some cases I believe that it is just
a detour that will have to be undone. 

-- 
   .~.  Jean-David Beyer           Registered Linux User 85642.
   /V\                             Registered Machine   241939.
  /( )\ Shrewsbury, New Jersey     http://counter.li.org
  ^^-^^ 07:15:00 up 16:29, 4 users, load average: 4.10, 4.12, 4.14

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