rjwohlfar@bigfoot.com wrote:
On 7 Jul, Derek Fountain wrote:
This isn't strictly SuSE related, but it is Linux related.
What are the fundamental differences between Linux and Windows these days? I can think of graphics, which is totally different, and disks/mount points which are handled differently. With Windows becoming network-ed (albeit badly), what genuine differences does that leave for the Linux community to exploit?
There have been a lot of good reasons already posted. But the one that really endeared me to Linux was automation. Shell scripts are powerful!
Well, M$ has an answer to this: Windows scripting host. Very useful. very powerful. Very well documented. Often used. particulary when the user is unaware of it reading anonymous love letters. Sadly, M$ failed to add the nessesarry securety (user dependent rights on files) to their systems...
I wrote my own diary program, download comics every night for offline viewing on a single page, ftp files in the middle of the night, start certain programs when starting X depending on the time of day, maintain a mailing list, etc...
I did that too: updating my local SDB that way. But stopped that two years back.
And behind the scripts are all of the command line utilities: sed, grep, wget, find, ls, tar, gzip, xtpanel, ...and countlesss more. Windows programs tend to be GUI centric. You run the GUI, hit the buttons. GUIs require manual intervention. Even with scheduling software, there's no way to start many Windows programs in a non-interactive mode.
We had an Office97 course at work, since the lecturer dan done introduction to WinNT as well someone asked a NT related question at the courses end: "I like a list on my dis[c,k]'s structure, files and all the lot. How can I print it from NT?" "Well, go to explorer, press PRINT, start winword, ...." Guess what the left wing penguin guerilla said hearing this answer... I send him to the DOS shell and tought him "tree". He admidted a zero knowledge of basic DOS. There is no way in all of NT to do this.
The Unix/Linux text based utilities aren't pretty to the eyes. But I can automate them. Run 'em from cron or within another program. And I won't even try to list all of the compilers/interpretors that are available for free (i.e. no cost). It's a programmer's dream.
exactly. I *hated* Unix because of the shell. With linux I learned that there were tools about that could help me, but they are not standard if you buy AIX or whatever and nobody would care to install them for users. With that knowledge I had to turn my hatred to those that refuse me the use of these tools, but not the system itself.
Of course that's what some users and critics don't like about Linux: too many cryptic commands that run from a command line. To each his own.
one of a thousend examples comes to mind: cdrecord and xcdroast. You can "remote control" these tools from a nice graphical program as well. Juergen
-- Robert Wohlfarth rjwohlfar@bigfoot.com
"My theory's right. Reality needs to be fixed."
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-- =========================================== __ _ Juergen Braukmann juergen.braukmann@gmx.de| -o)/ / (_)__ __ ____ __ Tel: 0201-743648 dk4jb@db0qs.#nrw.deu.eu | /\\ /__/ / _ \/ // /\ \/ / ===========================================_\_v __/_/_//_/\_,_/ /_/\_\ -- To unsubscribe send e-mail to suse-linux-e-unsubscribe@suse.com For additional commands send e-mail to suse-linux-e-help@suse.com Also check the FAQ at http://www.suse.com/support/faq