On Wed, Feb 20, 2002 at 10:55:09AM -0600, Dan Minette wrote: > Most of the people I work with/have as customers use Windows based > software. That means that they can easily read M$ office stuff. > > Plus, the software that my family likes to run is easily available at > the local store for M$, but not for Linux. Things like digital camera > download programs, geneology software, etc. Realistically, it needs > to be a matter of principal for me to use UNIX.
You can buy software in the store for Windows. Or you can download it for free for Linux: 8 free genealogy programs, 4-5 of which appear to be pretty sophisticated http://freshmeat.net/search/?q=genealogy§ion=projects&x=6&y=7 gphoto, supports 105+ digital cameras http://www.gphoto.org/info.html StarOffice, file compatibility with .doc, .xls, .ppt, more mature than OpenOffice http://www.sun.com/software/star/staroffice/ OpenOffice, file compatibility with .doc, .xls, .ppt, better design than StarOffice http://www.openoffice.org/ > And, you have to look at the overhead of teaching my family to run in > Linux, translating from Linux programs to Windows, etc. The first only applies since you are already running Windows. For someone who is buying their first computer, I think you would find that the family could learn Linux/KDE just as fast as Windows. The second really takes no time at all if you use a program that has file compatibility. If you don't and need to use a conversion program, that could also be made nearly instantaneous if you just make a very simple shell script to call the conversion program before you email the file. > > About the only time you need to reboot Linux is when you change > > hardware or kernels. So I'm not sure why you kept rebooting (my > > computer has been up since Jan 9, and only was down then so I could > > add some new hardware). > > Its a laptop that I put on a shelf when I don't use it. I had an > error that occured during shutdown, and I couldn't bring the system > up. Rebooting rarely solves a problem in Linux, that is a Windows-ingrained reflex that you should resist when using Linux. But you can almost always solve the problem without rebooting, just by changing the appropriate configuration files, restart daemons, or in your case, fsck'ing the file system. > > > I tried man and got very little that was helpful. If I already > > > knew the command (IIRC it was e2fsck, but I was just told it by > > > someone was able to access professionally for field system work I > > > was doing) then man would have helped. But, I don't think I could > > > have typed man boot problem. > > > > Also, you didn't have to call e2fsck directly. fsck is a front end > > to the file system specific programs, and will figure out that > > e2fsck needs to be run. fsck is pretty commong across *NICES, so now > > you know that when you need to check your file system on almost any > > UNIX system, use fsck. > > I ran fsck and absoultely nothing but the prompt came back. +man fsck FSCK(8) NAME fsck - check and repair a Linux file system SYNOPSIS fsck [ -sACVRTNP ] [ -t fstype ] filesys [ ... ] [--] [ fsck-options ] You can see from the man page that you have to specify what filesystem ('filesys') to run fsck on. If you just type fsck, then nothing will happen (although the version I use gives an error message about not specifying the filesystem, apparently yours wasn't so helpful). The other parameters in the [ ] are optional, but filesys is required. Also, further down the man page we see -V Produce verbose output, including all file system-specific commands that are executed. which is a common option for many programs. If you don't get enough output, try the verbose option. > IIRC, the head of the software group for the company I worked for > indicated that it wasn't very much use for the project. "it" = KDE? KDE is a graphical user interface toolset and application group. I was recommending it for home productivity use, since it feels similar to Windows. -- "Erik Reuter" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> http://www.erikreuter.com/
