see below, plz.. Dick ----- Original Message ----- From: "Raymond Moyers" <rmoyers(a)nop.orgTo: <classiccmp(a)classiccmp.orgSent: Monday, May 06, 2002 3:02 PM Subject: Re: APPLEVISION Monitor, Anything !Windows = Cryptic ? What's a bash? ... and what's mc? Would the man on the street know that? That may be true, but if you are sitting at computer keyboard for the first time in your life, how do you know what to do? > Unix, for years, shipped with a editor nobody could use > and backspace key that did not work, and seemed rigged > deliberate to prevent anyone but a machosist from > ever learning enough to discover the power lurking > therein, by sending all who dare attempt away > frustrated and with a new object for their HATE. > Linux is the first nix i saw that came out of the install > with a working backspace key and several editors > that a person new to Unix could use. Maybe someday someone will write a DOSEMU that works like DOS, and a WINE that actually executes Windows App's. That would go a long way to ending the MS monopoly on user-friendly, and make it possible for 3rd-party application developers to get up some applicatons that really work. > I credit these two things for its success, no longer > did it have two most fierce deterrents to learning. I think the learning is, in itself, a deterrent. I think what promotes the learning best is making the system such that one can do something one wants to do right out of the box and then letting people learn what they have to along the way.

MS likes to claim to be "user friendly" but they don't guarantee they're frustration-free. I've never had the frustration with Windows that I had with Linux during the timespan when I was trying to get it to do what it claimed. I gave up on the various versions of Linux and *nix that I had running, each on their own box here at the house. For single tasks, e.g. terminal server, Mail, News, it's fine and runs for ages without a problem. However, I'm not so sure it's as trouble free when you want to use a single machine to do a multitude of widely varying things. It may do that, but at what cost. Windows isn't free, but neither are Maalox and prune juice. more below... Dick ----- Original Message ----- From: "Raymond Moyers" <rmoyers(a)nop.org> To: <classiccmp(a)classiccmp.org> Sent: Monday, May 06, 2002 4:47 PM Subject: Re: APPLEVISION Monitor, Anything !Windows = Cryptic ? first What? Where's there a Windows emulator for Linux that runs MSOFFICE? Will, it at least, run CorelDRAW? How about the Xilinx Foundation software, or ALtera's Maxplus-II? NO, but if an OS is going to supplant Windows, it has to interchange data conveniently with machines that run Windows. I never said it had to be free, nor did I say the task was impossible. I'd welcome the day it happens. IN the meantime, I don't want to learn to use obscure app's for an OS that makes me work all the time, when I can use Windows will little or no effort. It's not perfect, but it appears to be what people want. How else can one explain the fact that most computer users, even Linux users, use it? Oh ... you mean the user friendly thing? Well I didn't say it wasn't frustrating. Why don't more people use it then? Is it because, unlike you, they're all idiots? Are you so much smarter than they? I doubt it. They're just focused on getting the job done, while you're focused on the OS. Why not try making sense instead? Bright matters when you're 14. After that it's what you've accomplished that makes you happy.

On Mon, 6 May 2002, Richard Erlacher wrote: Bash is the 'borne-again shell' (a user-friendly version of the Bourne Shell. mc == Midnight Commander. Find yourself an old copy of Norton Utilities and look for "Norton Commander". If you can figure out what Norton Commander is, you can figure out what mc is. Ask a person on the street who has never used or heard of a computer what a "Spreadsheet" or "Windows Explorer" is. It doesn't matter if it's Winblowz or Redhat Linux, you'll pick up on whatever OS is put in front of you, and your friends use. The only reason that Windows isn't going away quickly is because it's a monopoly. Look up 'upward spiral' to understand why M$ is doing well in the market. If Gary Kindall wasn't a business moron, and actually produced CP/M-86 for IBM to ship with its PCs, we'd be in an entirely differnt world right now, with Micrsoft not ever getting its monopoly powers. Type commands, read books, and ask other people. That's how I learned how to use DOS and write programs in GW-BASIC when I was a kid. Have you ever taken a look at some of the non-windows-only software out there, like OpenOffice?? I find OpenOffice at least as easy to use as M$ Office, and it doesn't have all the annoying 'features' and defaults that the M$ product does. Besides, it runs on Windows, *nix, and I think MacOS. I'd say if you're too apathetic to learn how to use something correctly, you should be taken outside and shot in the foot until you learn how to do it right. (Of course, I'm a bit more severe sounding than most people I'm sure, but brain-dead users really piss me off.) "If you're not going to do it right, don't bother doing it at all." -- Pat

OK... I see I've heard of the Bourne shell. I do vaguely remember something about a Norton Commander. It's not unsual for the guy next to you at the bar to know precisely what Excel and spreadsheet mean, BTW. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Pat Finnegan" <pat(a)purdueriots.com> To: <classiccmp(a)classiccmp.org> Sent: Monday, May 06, 2002 7:17 PM Subject: Re: APPLEVISION Monitor, Anything !Windows = Cryptic ? It's a monopoly on what? It owns the rights to the only really popular OS on the market, but a small, nimble software company could put a stop to that. If only folks would quite trying to impress everyone with their clever cryptics. I know the Mac isn't cryptic. It's not Windows. It doesn't support the other needs I have, though, so I'm still struggling. I didn't know the man, but by the time that CP/M 86 was being worked, MS had the entire computer world by the short and curly because they had the "real" basic interpreter and compiler and had Cobol, Fortran, and a handful of other useful tools. True, if Kildall had delivered CP/M 86 to big blue, DEC would still be turning gigabucks and microcomputers would still be pretty limited. Unix would, probably, still be the OS for MANLY men. I'm not at all sure that would be a better world. first But why, when you can just point and click in order to do the simple things most folks want to do? that MS the wants to along Does that apply to spelling and grammar as well? I see that you're an adherent to the premise that there's no need to do a thing except by the most painful way possible. RIGHT!

I remember trying to learn vi and making up lots of new cusswords in the university computing lab. (Using a Mac running NCSA Telnet, natch.) Now I won't use anything else but vi, because it's fast, flexible and very light on termcap (unlike a certain *ahem*PICO*ahem* other editor *ahem*PICO*ahem* I could mention). It was well worth the effort. One of my persistent threats is to write a stripped down vi clone for the C64. -- ----------------------------- personal page: http://www.armory.com/~spectre/ -- Cameron Kaiser, Point Loma Nazarene University * ckaiser(a)stockholm.ptloma.edu -- Advertising is the banging of a stick in a swillbucket. -- George Orwell ---

On Monday 06 May 2002 20:18, you wrote: Well, take it as i intended, today its not an issue, and perhaps the pressure of the free *nix systems had a part in the vendors cleaning things up Today the backspace key will work at least on most proprietary Unix. Face it, in user interface polish, the stuff written by those that care and the code they gave for free is light years superior to all the cruft written by the OS vendors, seemingly by people with no more interest in their product than "this is what i do inbetween weekends" If Sun IBM and a few others had their way the standard interface for Unix would be CDE, that is just as crappy a "no-design" as winblows where the closer you look the less you can decern what their goal was. Uber-crap like this is what happens when marketing mentality invades the creative space where it belongs as much as an airboat prop on a submarine. the early linux distro creators bundled with the base a choice of editors and a default shell where all the familiar keys worked and these two tiny little things, i assert droped the barrier to entry low enough that a newbie was no longer flogged into abandoning his quest of discovery short of discovering the power lurking within. OSX for the Macs is perhaps taking it to the next level, sure its a sucky microkernel and not the best example of a Unix but it will at least keep the people close enough that they should and will discover the awesome power of the architecture lurking underneath all the pretty frosting. Raymond "An OS without source is like buying a car with the hood locked, where only the car company has the key, you dont need to be a mechanic to gain benifit from free access to your engine compartment"