On Fri, 19 Feb 1999, Akintayo Holder wrote:
>Michael Trausch wrote:
>>
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>> Yeah, I'm now to the point of looking at it with a different point of
>> view, too. It's kind of dangerous, in a way, because I've actually been
>> using Linux for so long now, that I go back to DOS/Windows, and I type
>> UNIX commands... lol... and of course, they don't work. ;)
>>
>> Anyway... I'm very happy with Linux. I'm not a game player, so that's an
>> advantage. I do Internet things the most, and I love the text mode
>> interface (reminds me of the good 'ol days of the 8088, when you had to
>> type everything into the archaic DOS 2.11 shell, and you ran off of a
>> 5.25" floppy, although I run from a 3.5gb hard disk now.
>
>Ahh the old days, before the descent of the cursed WIMP
>Linux brings back the command line but with multitasking and stability.
>Call me weird but my favourite Linux features are quite simple; command
>line completion, virtual consoles, file permissions and and REAL command
>line. Any mistakes made are my fault not the pointing device. Simple,
>clean, powerful, so many of them do not know what they are missing. The
>command line is not to be feared but rather to be embraced, when was the
>last time a text display gave serious problems.
>
>> And if you ask why I use it now, the answer you'll hear from me is this:
>> Stability. Reliability. Comfortability..
>>
>> - Mike
>>
>
Interesting points. Personally, I use a combination of CL and WIMP. I
think we have three basic computer-usage philosophies out there:
1) Command line only. Even if you have to use X for netscape or
something, you always have an xterm on the screen). The adherents of
this philosophy can be amongst the most fanatical. They use "ex". They
use lynx.
2) Point-and-click and Drag-and-drop only. This is the Mac world, and
mostly the Windows world too. (As a friend pointed out upon seeing my
KDE screen, "Egad, hasn't anyone discovered a better metaphor than a
trashcan yet?") They use WordPerfect. They use Netscape Communicator.
3) A combination of the two. There are many levels under this, from
using the CL to get to WIMP (ala DOS), to using WIMP to get to the CL
(ala ten xterms tiled up on the screen). They think LyX is cool. They
use Netscape Navigator, but not necessarily Netscape Mail or News.
Neither of these philosophies is wrong. What is wrong is the insistance
that Linux be just one of them. For the first time, we have an OS that
can do either one of the three just as well as the others, with just as
much power.
I can use Linux the way **I** want to, regardless of what Bill Gates or
Richard Stallman think.
---
David Johnson
