🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <danpop.807144468@rscernix> Dan.Pop@mail.cern.ch (Dan Pop) writes:

>In <ericb.437.301BD9B0@psu.edu> ericb@psu.edu (Eric Bennett) writes:

>>I would like to have the chance to use X sometime.  The two people I know who 
>>run Linux have 4 and 8 megs of RAM respectivley, and both have 386s.  Not 
>>good for running X :(

>Pretty good for running X.  My notebook has 8 megs too and has been 
>running X for the last two years without any problems.

Certainly not the 4 meg machine.  The guy with 8 does have X installed, but he 
can't run more than one or two X programs without bogging down with swapping.

>>
>>Exactly what I don't want to do.  It drives me crazy when he calls me three 
>>times in one evening to ask a question he should have been able to have 
>>answered by reading a manual.  I want him to become self-sufficient, and I 
>>think he has much better chance of doing that with a Mac than with a Unix 
>>machine.

>Someone who can't be bothered to read a manual won't become self-sufficient
>on any system, including a Mac (have you noticed that all Mac software
>comes with manuals?).

But I think you can get away with reading a lot less on the Mac.

>The difference is that you can't fix a problem on your friend's Mac 
>without being physically in front of its screen and keyboard.  A modem
>connection doesn't help at all for this task.

Well, I *could* get some help from a modem connection--Peter Lewis's FTPd 
would let me poke around with his system configurations and launch or kill 
processes, for example, but to actually _use_ the system I'd need Timbuktu, 
which would probably be unpleasant over a 14.4 modem.

Of course, there would be some problems that I can't solve over the modem by 
myself on any OS, for example, a recent problem where the Mac
wouldn't play audio CDs.  If it had been a Unix machine, how would I remotely 
insert a CD into the drive to see if it's working?

In any case, I haven't yet encountered a Mac problem I couldn't solve by 
talking my dad through it on the phone, which is probably better than fixing 
it myself because he'll be able to deal with the problem (or so I hope :) the 
next time it surfaces.

-Ericb@psu.edu