Well, as another newbie I guess I'll chime in here with a few lighthearted comments. Bottom line -- its not easy being a newbie ;0)
Its fun to hear something of what's going on for the experts on this list, but most of the time I don't understand what is being discussed. That's okay, its still a great way to pick up details that DO matter to me as various threads develop. My situation seems a bit more complicated as I jumped into Linux on the Macintosh/PPC platform. I naively thought that Linux was Linux, the same no matter where you go and all would be well. It has been only by the help of a couple expert friends that I was able to get some basic things configured including screen res. And my friend tells me that after we've been through a bunch of hassles, I probably need to recompile X (or something) to get some essential research software to draw plots on the screen correctly. Well, since we all rely on *actual users* to figure out how to get things to work, this is not surprising -- BUT for 75 bucks SuSE claims to support my specific machine (PowerBook G3) for a relatively painless install, which it wasn't. Rich's comments ring true about getting help installing. As far as *free* is concerned, I have so far invested about $200 in SuSE 7.1, then 7.3, a book on some Unix user basics, and just this weekend a thick Que book on Using Linux. This is far more than I paid for the even high priced Mac OS X, which INCLUDED the latest OS 9. I'm not bitter about that, it is a fun learning experience but damn this learning curve is STEEP :0) To be fair, I also have about 11 years of Mac experience under the belt, and I can troubleshoot and fix almost anything on the Mac platform, but I never had to buy no $50 dam book to start getting work done on the mac! For me, the following Linux issues remain -- 1) I still am not able to just boot Linux up and start getting work done; too much of a paradigm shift. There must be some good tutorials on the web for new users , but of all the sites I've visited I havent found much that is explained in a way that makes sense to me. I keep thinking at some point things will begin to fit into some zenlike big picture, and then I think what if Linux is like some bizarro world from a Terry Gilliam film where no, dammit, it doesn't HAVE to make sense! (insert maniacal laughter here :0) 2) Still looking for some grand explanation to make sense of whats in all those directories, and where I go if I want to see how something is configured. This is where the concept of the installfest could be extended to something more like counseling for frustrated newbies! Haha! 3) Linux is not MacOS and its not Windows, and by the way its not your mother. I think its cool that Linux is wild and free and continually developing, and I have wanted to be a part of that ever since the development of some linux-only research software that I couldn't have published a paper without. I really hope Linux is the future. Its just been too difficult to master by fiddling around. Back to the books! --Michael -- ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ Michael L. Bovee, Ph.D. Postdoctoral Fellow University of Vermont Department of Biochemistry B403 Given Building Burlington, VT 05405-0068 email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://biochem.uvm.edu Lab 802-656-0345 FAX 802-862-8229 ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ ***************************************************************** To unsubscribe from this list, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the text 'unsubscribe gnhlug' in the message body. *****************************************************************
