-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 On Sunday 01 June 2003 18:39, Anders Johansson wrote: <snip>
I don't agree. the /dev/ fs is an important property of Linux/Unix, it is imho important that users realize that ordinary files basically behave in the same way as a mounted floppy, a string of zero's, a string of nulls or a tapedrive. Ie, they have stdin and stdout, and can pipe from or to programs.
No it isn't. It is completely useless knowledge for, say, the company secretary. In fact, it is worse than useless, since it's just distracting from his/her real work.
There are users for whom that type of knowledge would be useful. And then there are most users, for whom it is not.
Agreed. Not that it means it still shouldn't stay there or be there if a regular 'Joe' wants to 'start' to look at it or see what it is/does, though.
Knowing a thing or two about the /ever present/ standard text processor tools is usefull too, if only to give them a feel for the power of these tools for future uses.
For most regular users there are not now, nor will there ever be a time when sed, awk of vi is useful. This is why companies have admins.
It is extremely detrimental to the "linux on the desktop" movement to include this type of material in "luser" classes. It scares people away.
Also agreed. I've a couple of friends who got as far as the 7th grade. They're not book smart, but have all the common sense anyone could ever need...this doesn't make watching me try to show them using CLI on a konsole to untar, compile, and install a tarballed app any easier for them though. They've *never* had to mess with cli in any way on M$. They *love* Linux, but they're still gonna have to be slowly worked into being less fearfull of CLI...but if I were to open vi or awk or sed...forget it, they're eyes would glaze over and I'd lose them forever. Hell...*my* eyes glaze over seeing vi or awk! I *want* to know how to use these things, but my condition just doesn't make it feasable for me. These things *are* useful though for admins, and those who find these things 'easy' to learn and useful, but the regular 'Joe' just won't really need to use them, since kedit or kword work just fine for us 'Joe's'. John - -- I needed fresh bugs for my SuSE gecko, and Linux penguin. So I went out and caught this huge ugly blue and red and green and yellow butterfly. They won't need fresh food for 3 months now. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.2.2 (GNU/Linux) iD8DBQE+2r+AH5oDXyLKXKQRAnF4AKCYfDZt1Wr43wSNZ5fDFEEaROE64wCcCPBO fv8nS5XiL165Lg+PUj9s7nc= =HsZJ -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----