Steve wrote: > > > There is a great deal more complexity and confusion for > > the Linux novice like myself then there ever was with DOS. > > When I was switching from the Commodore 64 to > MS-DOS 5.0, I felt the same way.
Amen, brother! I was a Commodore Commando for eleven years (a lifetime in computer years). I was a real virtuoso: peeking and poking, programming in 6502 machine code, compiling, writing magazine articles, business programs and adventure games, and being a general know-it-all. I even invented a buffer-overflow exploit (fortunately I used my powers for good, rather than evil). And then came the decline. As the IBM PC increased in popularity, Commodore wilted. One-by-one the Commodore groups, magazines and contacts disappeared. Most of my Commodore friends switched to IBM PCs. I became more and more isolated in my Commodore world. I was stubborn to the last, telling anyone who would listen that Commodore could do anything and that there was no need to switch to this new IBM thing, with all its fancy commands and complicated ways of doing things. Sound familiar? Eventually I surrendered and bought a new 386. It was horrible. All the commands were wrong. The syntax was insane. I mean *really* what is the point of that stupid colon in the names of drives?? Don't they realize that you have to press the shift key to get a colon?!! And the IBM BASIC, talk about pathetic. And all those commands and parameters, it would take years to memorize them all. And why were the configuration files (config.sys and autoexec.bat) so damn complicated? And on and on and on. I hated my IBM PC. I hated the fact that I had gone from Commodore hero to IBM zero. For the next year I continued to hate my IBM. I concentrated on BBSing and word processing. The IBM was just an appliance and I was just a dumb user. However, as time passed, I became more comfortable with DOS and began trying things. Eventually, I came to like it and stopped longing for the glory days of Commodore. The transition from Commodore to DOS was *very* painful for me. But it was worthwhile. I just wish I had done it four years earlier. Because, by the time I was comfortable with DOS, it was already in decline. The world was moving to point-and-click and I would soon be obsolete again. The transition from DOS to Linux was much less painful. First, because I didn't have to abandon DOS completely (since Linux and DOS can run on the same machine). Second, because DOS and Linux share many common characteristics (which DOS and Commodore didn't). And third, because the Linux community provides a wealth of support (unlike the DOS community in the early 90s). > You don't really have to dive in all at once. You can just > stick a toe in to begin with. Either dual-boot between DOS and > Linux, or get a throwaway computer (or a $10-$25 ebay special) > and put Linux on that. I'll second that. Even a 386 (with 8meg RAM) is just fine. And with two computers, you can do all sorts of interesting TCP/IP stuff over ethernet or parallel/serial nullmodem. For example, there is an easy HTTP server that runs in Linux. You could use it to serve web pages from your throwaway machine to the Arachne browser on your DOS machine. Cheers, Steven ____________________________________________________ Linux for old PCs: http://homepages.ihug.co.nz/~ichi
