🚀 go-pugleaf

In <33434531.11760461@news.uq.edu.au>, p.west@mailbox.uq.edu.au (Peter B. West) writes:


]I think it is generally inappropriate.  If you are a new user, groping
]your way around the system, making mistakes as you go, then it is
]necessary.  And it is easy to provide this functionality.  When I first
]installed RedHat linux, after an absence from unix of a few years, I ran
]into the problem of the interactive "rm".  The pest of a thing kept
]asking me to confirm my rm's.  After grinding my teeth and uttering
]imprecations a few times, the penny dropped, and I realised that I had
]been alias'd.  Good idea.  If you are distributing a system for new

So that's how to turn it off...

]The problem is, that the whole underlying approach of unix is different.
]unix takes a tool-building approach.  Everything is written with a view
]to its ease-of-use in building up more sophisticated tools.  A effect of
]this is that there is a certain underlying orthogonality in the dessign
]of the system, and a certain predictability.  It was also written by and
]for people who wanted to get some work done.  A major part of learning
]unix is coming to know and love this underlying rationale.

It's not essential to use names such as awk, vi, groff, troff, cron, 
    apropos, bash, grep, grog, grotty, gtroff, ld, ldd, nenscript, nroff, 
    chmod, chroot, arch, cat and so on or to have product names such as 
    python, perl, curses, pine, elm, tin, emacs ... or to contain 
    "functions" such as bless, chop, chomp, splice, glob, getgrent, semop 
    to be a means of building powerful tools.

I have Redhat Linxu 3.0.3 AND 4.0. There are packages I've not installed 
    becase their names give me no idea of what they do and the docs were 
    written by a Linux person who knows well enough that he's forgotten 
    what tyros need to know.

I found OS/2 much easier to use but have spent much more money on 
    Linux/Unix books.

It seems to me that many Unix software developers have spent excess energy
    concocting unlikely names for their products and elements of their 
    products.

Who thinks that variable names such as $4, $&, $' (did I get the right 
    key?) $+ $* are intuitive?

Should anyone think I know little about computers, spend some time in my 
    web pages.



]New users eventually, and pretty quickly, become experienced users.

They become productive less quickly than on most other platforms.

]When that happens, the GUI often becomes an impediment.  You see this
]all the time in the MS world.  Users who make a living using say, Word

On OS/2 I use both the commandline and the gui interface extensively. It's
    no impediment.

Of course, windows may well be different.


]or PageMaker shun the mouse like the plague.  They want to get their
]work done from the keyboard, and generally do.  That's what keyboard
]shortcuts are for.  These "keyboard shortcuts" are not that at all; they
]are an approach to a sensible and useful user interface.  The other
]approach is the 'GUI longcuts' - great when you don't know which
]direction is up, but a pest from then on.  Of course, if you are only
]ever an occasional user of some particular piece of software, the hunt
]through those pull-downs is useful.  You don't *want* to have to learn
]how to use it.

And a great way to start using unfamiliar software immediately. I've never
    seen a version of MS Word newer than 4.0 (DOS, not WIN) but I'd be vry
    surprised if I couldn't use it straight away to write letters and even
    moderately complex documents.

]Would I eliminate the GUI?  Never.  I like to use X, for example.  It
]gives me the best of both worlds, because the most common window I am in
]inside X is an xterm, with a good old shell.  It does make the reality
]of a multi-tasking OS more obvious and accessible.

]Unix has the tools to present a uniform, friendly face to the outside

It has?

I've used several systems, ranging from enormous mainframes to a System 
    80.

Of all the systems I've used, Linux has the steepest learning curve. It's 
    far from the most friendly and certainly not the most powerful.

I'm not about to remove it from my computers, but neither am I about to
    ditch OS/2 in its favour:  to do so would mean I spend more time
    fighting the computer than using it.

Linux has its strengths and advantages. Ease of use is not among them.




Cheers
John Summerfield
Warped & Connected
Perth, Western Australia
OS2 support @ http://www.iinet.net.au/~summer/
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