[plug] Linux is out, for now.

[Christian]

Darrell Horrocks wrote:

> I think that there is a certain level of background knowledge that you need.
> And rather than this being linux specific, this is mainly because it is a
> command line interface rather than a GUI.  You can't just play on a command
> line, or even find help, because you need to learn the commands to GET that
> help.  After all, it isn't just linux.  Give most people a DOS box and they will
> stumble as much as on a linux box (what do you mean I can't click and drag ;-) )

I vaguely remember a study being done in the US with school children and
they found that the children picked up learning a command line interface
almost as quickly as a windowing one -- the conclusion being that people
find it hard to switch between different interface types but don't find
it significantly difficult learning one interface as opposed to
another.  Nevertheless your points about a CLI are probably quite valid
in general.

> As an example of background knowledge, take the command ls.  It is just
> fortunate on the RH dists that the dir command also works, otherwise people
> would have no idea.  And you DO need to know this before you start to use
> linux.  Sure you can use man ls to get what it does, but you have to KNOW what
> it is called.  And it is this knowledge that stops newcomers using linux.  If I
> hadn't had to learn unix at uni, I no doubt would have given up, as a previous
> person has done.

Linux uses the GNU ls which also includes dir and vdir -- therefore it's
common to all distributions (I believe).

> My interest is trying to get linux onto the desktop.  KDE is what I am
> roadtesting at the moment, but Gnome isn't too far away.  And the idea of a
> package (aka install) is vital to avoid going to a prompt.  I know this is
> heresy to those gurus out there, but people are just too used to a GUI for
> everything.  Even pulling up a DOS box under windows is too hard for most.

Debian has gnome-apt (although I haven't really tried it) and I believe
Red Hat has a similar GUI package tool.  I don't think you'll really
have long to wait before a lot of basic Linux admin work can be done
very comfortable in the GUI.

> So as an advocate for linux, I think that the tutoring role has to be toned down
> one stop.  And BASIC commands have to be taught, or recommend an online HOWTO
> command line (is there one?).

There are some basic Linux intros at the LDP which are probably what
you're referring to.  They're quite good if people bother to read them.

Regards,

Christian.

-- 
It took the computing power of three Commodore 64 computers to
fly to the moon. It takes a 486 66MHZ computer to run Windows 95.