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Fw: [cobalt-users] RAQ2 - GUI Replacement Needed



Ahoy Bruce

You know, Bruce, there is nothing wrong with being a beginner, so long as
you are willing to begin. It sure ain't brain surgery. It can be done. Just
gotta get started. The question is, are you a beginner, or a quit before I
beginner?

Here's the problem: Each UNIX thing you try to learn, everybody tells you to
read the manual, every manual tells you to read sixteen other manuals, which
each tell you to read sixteen other manuals. Each manual is written in
turgid geeklish, and when you ask for help, some snotty geek will yell at
you "RTFM, you moron!", but you couldn't even get started with the manuals,
and that's why you asked him.

Here, for instance, is the definition of a tilde (~), taken from one of my
thick Perl tomes: "This operator returns the bitwise negation of an integer
operand. The result of this operation is sometimes known as the one's
complement. " What the crap is a beginner supposed to learn from that? You
gotta know all about it to understand the definition, and then you wouldn't
need the definition. All this obfuscation is very unnecessary. It's just
geeks sticking it to you. This is what made Bill Gates rich. On the one
side, you have innumerable geniuses who delight in confusing you. On the
other side, you have one rich dweeb who gives you a buggy button to click.
Therefore, nearly everyone clicks the button, and gets on with their lives.

It all frustrates beginners, Bruce, and makes them look for some whiz-bang
GUI shortcut. They say "Give me a simple GUI! I don't want to have to think!
I want to do UNIX work, but I don't want to do UNIX!"

Problem is, there is no shortcut. You just have to begin, take your lumps,
and work your way through, in the hope that, some day, you too can yell at
someone "RTFM, you moron!" Even as simple a thing as generating a web page
cannot successfully be done with a whiz-bang. That's how people create these
240Kb abortions that take a half-hour to download, is by punching an "Export
as HTML"  button on their automatic plastic fantastic word-processing app.
Their resulting  page has 4,000 "<P><font face=shebang_light></font></P>"s
and six "<IMG SRC="file:///c|/my documents/my whiz bang site/images/cxa.jpg"
WIDTH=383 HEIGHT=240>"s, none of which display a stinking thing.

See, when you are administering a web server, you are not driving a new
Buick Park Avenue. You are driving a vintage 60s MG. Yes, it's quirky, it's
broken all the time, and it takes a lot of fiddling. Without either hiring a
full-time mechanic, or else owning a good set of tools and a place to work,
you simply cannot own that car. It is not a girl's car. It is a mechanic's
car. In other words, even to make the GUI whiz-bang work like you want it,
you will have to dive into the Linux guts of it. It doesn't matter whether
it's an MGB or an MG Midget or a MG 1100, or even, for that matter, a
Triumph or BSA motorcycle. If it's British, buy a set  of wrenches, buddy.

So the point of my disquisition is that, no matter what box or platform you
choose, you have to be willing to begin. If you are not, you must either not
go there, or hire a mechanic.

Here's the good news: It's fun. If you are the kind of guy who takes a
crossword puzzle to the can, then you can do it, and enjoy it. Even an MG
Midget is fun to drive, and it's nifty to say you own one. How many other
people have a car you can step into without opening the door? Or, to shift
the analogy, Harley Davidson would have died a well-deserved death many many
years ago, if its devotees were not willing and eager to turn a wrench.

So, what about you? Are you a beginner?

Aloha
Davis




-----Original Message-----
From: Bruce Kiley <bkiley@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: cobalt-users@xxxxxxxxxxxxx <cobalt-users@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Tuesday, November 23, 1999 7:59 AM
Subject: [cobalt-users] RAQ2 - GUI Replacement Needed


>Hi,
>
>My RAQ just died (will not boot).  So i'm returning it back to Cobalt, and
who knows how long this will take.  My problem is I'm not the best unix
engineer in the world.  I liked the RAQ's interface, because it was simple,
and was all browser based.   Are their any other products available for the
"begginer" like me for standard Linux out of the Box?
>
>bruce
>
>_______________________________________________
>cobalt-users mailing list
>cobalt-users@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>http://list.cobalt.com/mailman/listinfo/cobalt-users
>





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