On 2 Feb 02 at 15:25, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: >> ... some command features left out in Busybox. For beginners it >> would be most important to avoid ambiguity. > >I think your choice to say "_most_ important" is an indication that >you are now a step or two up the learning curve.<g>
>I like busybox, which probably means I'm not as far up the ladder, >and I disagree with your use of the word "most" above because I >think the average beginner should be made as comfortable as possible >as quickly as possible with what may be their first exposure to >Linux. Sorry, Clarence, for the impolite flaming word MOST. Everything is relative. But in the flavour of Linux we are diving in, you are from the very first moment busy investigating why something does NOT work. And some of us like right this, because this is the way they learn. However, you need to have a chance to find out what is going wrong. I mean, the above mentioned ambiguity is just a lack of documentation. Without Steven's help I would never have found out that the tar command built into Busybox has a different syntax than the tar binary present on other Linux distributions and described in the man pages coming with BasicLinux's HD version. >Even if it is confusing later on (that can be straightened out later on) a >good first experience is essential. > >Tell me, did YOU benefit from the use of busybox at the start ? The only function of Busybox in my understanding is that it keeps the RD version of BasicLinux so small that it fits on a PC with only 8 MB. For those who want to climb the ladder (or at least keep the results of their experiments) Steven prepared the HD version. From that moment on it would be possible to replace some commands from Busybox with full featured binary versions. This need not be forced, as BasicLinux even in the HD version wants to keep small. But I think, it should be documented. >Maybe all we need is a little text file included with the RD distro >warning/explaining the dangers of getting too comfortable with DOS-like >commands ? Just one sentence explaining that Busybox does not support all command line options listed on the man pages, and where the Slackware versions of those utilities can be obtained. DOS-like commands are a completely different issue. Copy, dir, edit, del, ren, cd.. and how many commands you ever want are not defined by Busybox, but by the file /root/.profile. And this actually was what me helped MOST (sorry!) when I dived into Linux. Christof Lange _______________________________________________ Christof Lange <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Prokopova 4, 130 00 Praha 3, Czech Republic phone: (+420-2) 22 78 06 73 / 22 78 20 02 http://www.volny.cz/cce.zizkov
