On Wednesday 05 September 2001 01.03, Bruce Marshall wrote:
On Tuesday 04 September 2001 05:42 pm, Anders Johansson wrote:
This question is one that caused me a lot of headaches when I was trying to play DVDs in linux. It's distribution specific in a sense, but still...
Q) My CD/DVD is slower than in windows, and YaST system tuning has nothing to say about it
A) hdparm -d 1 /dev/cdrom turns on dma for the CD-player, even though YaST says it can't.
Good question and answer.... but the people I am targeting wouldn't even know where to type hdparm and wouldn't do it if they did because they'd be afraid the computer would yell WHHAAAAAATTT?????? at them and then explode.
I'm doing this for the END USER.... the masses that can just barely spell komputur and they use the mouse like a tv remote... (hold it up and point it at the screen) :0)
Fair enough, but even in windows some tasks involve going in to the device manager and turning on/off features. Sometimes the computer isn't shipped with DMA on by default, for instance. And your items 3, 4 and 5 will always involve typing commands at a shell prompt (in fact your item 3 is specifically how to do that). Also, I've had quite a lot of experience with the computer illiterate, and I think they're grossly underestimated. While it's true that some are unable to grasp the concepts of computing, and some are simply afraid, most are intelligent people, well qualified in their own fields, and quite capable of following instructions, so long as they're clear and precise. And, to the best of my knowledge, my Q is at present impossible to solve without using a command prompt. What would your answer be when a newbie asks you how to view DVDs under linux? "That can't be done right now. Wait for the next release of YaST/linuxconf/whatever"? (or if there is a tool somewhere that can do this specific task automatically, substitute any command line activity necessary for some task that the newbie wants to do) A FAQ for the *complete* newbie is, as things stand right now, difficult if not impossible to produce, if you shun the command prompt. A man cannot live by GUI alone, if he wants to get his linux box to perform every task it can perform. Not today. Anders