Hi Greppers & Groaners,
What a sound thread this is I have but one suggestion that
would help
thos with only one blade to their prop.
I used to use ESIX SVR4 before I moved (most of the time) to Linux. I
used the following ploy many a time when I was learning the ropes. Many
Man pages do have examples if you look for them ( mkisofs is an example)
if on SVR4 in Xterm all I used to do was list the man page that I wanted
and then kill the man app which on that system did not clear the screen
but left you with the part of the man page you needed I could then just
copy the command line to the command prompt and run it. This taught me
not only the command but the general syntax of the Bourne shell; of
course to do this in X is even easier just open two terminals and you
can cut and paste.
If it was a "Manual Page" standard to have the most commonly used
command line parameters for the program in the 2 or 3 examples then
there would be no problem. One could even have a man page of most
commonly used syntaxes.
The reality is though, that Linux/UNIX is a powerful and complex
operating system with many tools that can work alone or in combination
with each other and to get the best out of it requires of necessity a
full understand of why it is the way it is. To many that subscribe to
this list it is a thing of beauty and elegance but to the average
Windows user who wants to change to another OS it can be an absolute
nightmare (just read some of the "newbie" list).
There is a simple answer to this and that is to make the distros less
complex. What pray is the point of having five different desktops
installed on a system. Here's a very simple reason why it's a bad plan.
If I am running Windows as an ignorant user and find something I don't
know how to do I can ring up my friend Marcia down the road and ask
"have you managed to do this yet?" if she hasn't I ring my friend John
in the next town and low and behold he's done it and talks me through
the procedure on his screen. I'm sure you see the point.
The real beauty of a free OS implemented in this way is that once people
become proficient and used to the basic operation of the system they can
go to any number of websites and download a more sophisticated desktop,
application or whatever when they desire. I believe that Linux will not
succeed until some steps are taken to limit it's diversity.
'Scuse the rant
Regards,
Colin H. Close
