Larry Marshall wrote:
>
> > Just type 'mc' at your terminal prompt - it should be part of the
> > standard install. It's almost exactly like the Dos equiv. - a few
>
> Very interesting...something new to play with. thanks.
>
> > I'm not ofay with the history of Linux - I suspect that Linus
> > may have been avoiding copyright issues. Sure catches me still but
> > less and less
>
> Could be. My understanding, though, is that he started with Minix in
> mind and Tannenbaum's book is pretty widespread and there's been a
> number of offshoots of Minix. Gee...times do change. You just made
> me remember buying Tannenbaum's OS book and the Minix package and
> paying nearly $300CDN for it. All you got was source code and there
> wasn't much in the way of apps that ran with Minix. Yep...the good
> old days weren't.
$300Cdn equates to close to $NZ750 !!! Pretty inexpensive - Way back
I bought a cross-compiler for 8080/6502, list price in California was
$US49.95. It's on 8-inch floppies with a manual that is 2 inches thick.
Still takes a huge chunk of one of my book shelves in it's fancy
packaging.
By the time freight, customs duties, and our local sales on computer
stuff,
45% in those days, and currency conversions - I wound up paying out a
paultry
$NZ500 for a product I used once!!!!
But then I also paid $NZ13,000 for a twin floppy 256kb IBM-PC in 1982.
> > I pulled Star Office from Sun in 7 tarballs way back (ver 5.1). I
> > do like it even if it takes an age to load up on this old beast.
>
> I sure wish they'd hack those apps away from that distortion called
> their desktop. They've learned from Mr. Gates..."do it all in one
> place" is a "feature", not a stupid idea...at least in their minds. I
> like the apps but it seems so non-Linux to have such an integrated
> approach.
I'm only using it because of the huge accumulation of Word, Excel and
other MSDOS-based datafiles I maintain for various historical projects
I'm still supporting. I like the fact that is able to read and write
so many different formats, even if it does make the beast grunt.
> > RedHat/Mandrake paths?? dunno, I assumed that because L-M was a
> > sub/super set of RH that they'd be pretty much the same - Bit
>
> Agreed, but I could have sworn that when I had RH installed it's use
> of directories was more what I was used to than with Mandrake. It's
> probably my two neurons acting up again.
>
> > Problem here is that I don't think I'm qualified any longer to venture
> > an opinion where programming languages are concerned - too long away.
>
> It's for the same reason that I'm asking the question.
>
> > I guess the only opinion/comment I would make in this area is that
> > programming in whatever language is a young persons'domain for the
> > most part. I think many of us oldies are too set in our ways to
>
> <grin>...and they don't mind that "just one more compile" routine at
> 3AM:-)
Oh - I still do that too - took almost 2 hours one night to re-compile
my kernal - and that was to the first failure!!!
> I've written a lot of C++ code so I'm pretty comfortable with using
> class libraries and such. tcl/tk is nice cuz it works on many
> platforms and I know something about it. But like you say, writing
> lots of code is not something I'm dying to do. But with gnu C++
> compilers and such sitting on my machine, I'm sure I'll "need" some
> sort of utility that doesn't exist currently. At this point I'm about
> to hack together a decent addressbook but I really should spend my
> free time learning more about Linux rather than doing what I know how
> to do :-)
I haven't 'programmed' in C for about 12 years - and most of that was
pretty basic stuff in Borland Turbo and MS Quick C.
Mostly I think I would be better off re-learning to use shell-scripting.
Most of the tools for *nix are already here waiting for us. I like the
process of using well-written and mostly specific tools to manipulate
or massage data.
I have to get to grips with 'sed' 'grep' 'awk' again so's I can follow
some of the processes being used here. For example why if I look at
my environment variables I find different paths set for my four user
accounts. The boot process seems to be different or to take different
routes depending on the user, the run level, the GUI interface and
so on - really frustrating at times.
I frustrates me to find references to non-existant directories and
for one account the $PATH takes up 6 screen lines - bloody thing has
been appended several times - grrrrrrrrrrrrr!! no good reason for it,
but I haven't yet discovered which script is being called or parsed
several times - nutzzzzz.
I have several machines here - all used for different functions - I
would like to network them all - but again there is such a proliferation
of HOWTOs it makes it very difficult to work out which suits best. What
we all need are step-by-step what-if type lists to refer to as we move
ahead. I for one am too involved in other non-computer related projects
to re-invent the wheel, and much of the available documentation is
pretty
sparse when it comes to examples.
I know the stuff is out there somewhere, and I really do feel for those
who ask a reasonably well-phrased question and get a four-letter
response.
'RTFM' is absolutely no use to those people who have not come from a
background of administration or even worse don't understand how to find
the 'FM'.
Many (most?) are coming from systems where the commandline means
nothing,
and may not even be accessable. They often have no idea how their
systems
find the applications let alone what is involved in the process of
tapping
a key and having the characater appear on the screen.
Hell - I built my first computing device from discretes back in the
early
70's to solve a problem which had nothing to do with computing per se.
In 1974/5 I migrated to an Intel 4040 chip-set after someone asked me
why
I wasn't using a 'microprocessor'. I didn't even know what a micro-p
was!!
What a learning curve!! Today the device I had need of is little bigger
than a postage stamp and is fitted as standard in most cars! Then it was
a jumble of wires and home-made pc-boards in a 19-inch rack and required
4 15-plate car-batteries as a power source!!!
> > Comment - We must be about due for a flame here - something about
> > wasting bandwidth on reminiscing.
>
> You're probably right. Is there an old fart's list somewhere?
Yup - we're it <grin>
Cheers
--
ICQ# 89345394 Mailto: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
