🚀 go-pugleaf

It's 22 Mar 97  15:40,
We'll return to zzppham@dingo.cc.uq.edu.au and All's
discussion of linux/unix?

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

You're right.  It's not difficult, _if_ you're prepared to have a go,
read the docs and occasionally ask for help.  I learnt basic unix
commands on a commercial ISP's shell account, and a year later, had my
first experience with Linux itself. :-)

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

:-)  IMHO, it's difficult, if you're not prepared or able to treat the
computer as a dumb, literal machine (which is all they are).  If you are
open to poking around and taking note of what happens (even if it's
"Oops, don't do that again!" after typing rm -rf * in /, while logged in
as root ;) ).

 zz> :-)??? The command line is much more flexible than dos, and man does an
 zz> excellent job of telling me what each command does. grep is great btw,
 zz> I now can not do without it :-).

grep, oh I wish how DOS came with that command. :-)

 zz> Nah.....the only trouble I had was I didn't know how to shutdown at
 zz> the start :-) and ctrl-alt-del was how I used to shutdown for at least
 zz> a month :-) but Linux happily rewrote my partition table :-).

Hehe, part of the learning experience.  I found the Linux Bible helpful
here.  It pointed me to the shutdown command. :-)

 zz> As an example, pico is one heck of a more intuitive text editor than
 zz> dos's edit. And if I had more bang, emacs is better than the space

Indeed!

 zz> He actually sounds just like me when I started, and I only looked
 zz> into linux because an amigoid friend had bsd and also because I
 zz> had a couple of spare peecees that didn't have the beef to run MS
 zz> software anymore :-). Now my 8Mb 386 is happily masq'ing my mac onto
 zz> the net, it is doing Appletalk fileserving with netatalk, and most
 zz> importantly making computing fun again :-D.

Hehe, I know that feeling.  I have Linux running my Internet link, with
a demand dialler to make it totally "plug and play" for the non unix
person here (just turn it on and fire up Netscape on the Windows box! :)
).  Also great when the other machines decide to crash, no spending 25c
to re-establish a new call. :-)

 >That's the logic of my post.

 zz> Well, that's my two cents, but of course that said, if I detect that
 zz> my friend was the type that wouldn't read man pages then well I'd go
 zz> with your logic :-) .

I think that's the key.  Linux demands that you RTFM (pages ;) )
frequently, but if you do, you don't have to be a rocket scientist (or
systems programmer, for that matter) to drive the system. :-)

... Does the Enterprise use DOS v 2356.0?
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