🚀 go-pugleaf

Robert Paul Pham (zzppham@dingo.cc.uq.edu.au) wrote:
: j.stokes@bohm.anu.edu.au (Jason Stokes) writes:

: >It's just that I think arbitrarily naive users shouldn't be trying Linux if
:                   ^^^^^
: >they don't already have some experience with Unix, or at least computer
: >science.  Because Linux, despite all the PR, is still user hostile.  To

: I hope you don't give this advise to all your friends, I am not a CS grad,
: I had no previous experience with Unix, my other computer is a macintosh,
: but I have been happily Linuxing for the last 2 years, installation of the
: Slackware CD was easier than trying to install NT Workstation (IMHO), and
: Idiot's guide to Unix, man, apropos and the #linux channel on irc was my
: only source of help.

: I can't see why all the Unix gurus keeps saying that Unix is difficult, is
: it a conspiracy to keep a good thing all to themselves :-)??? 

That is because the guru's will tell you that if you want to define what
Unix is (or rather what Linux is in our case), the single entity that
defines this is the system functions. hence it's not what the user sees 
that matters, it's what the user programs see.

You can write a convincing MessyDos like shell and it will still be Un*x,
You can write a GUI that looks exactly like the old Commodore 64 GEOS, yet
it will still be Unix, as long as the system functions still comprise of a
set of functions that are characteristic of unix, it will be so. So,
inorder to understand Un*x, you have to understand the system functions.
To understand the system functions, you really must fit within a
programmer.. 

Now to say whether un*x is easy or hard, that really depends on whether 
you're a programmer or not, and how well you fathom the system functions.

Much literature that describes Unix will tell you that Unix is a "Programmers
Operating System", infact i think Ken Thompson (the inventor of Unix) said
so..  So, basically, the attitude with Unix has always been this way i 
guess.

See ya

--
Jason Nunn,Darwin,Northern Territory,Australia

"proceed with confidence"