the Missing M
Group: Members
Posts: 35
Joined: Mar. 2007 |
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Posted: Mar. 23 2007,15:38 |
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On any platform, I've always liked and respected lean, clean software that doesn't weigh too heavily on the hardware. Often you get the same or better functionality, with the added benefit of much greater speed. Okay, so you miss the fun of watching a beautifully rendered splash screen for thirty seconds, while the program loads. That's one aesthetic experience I can usually do without.
But the traditional command-based UI of UNIX, Linux, and other UNIX-like systems can be a little intimidating. *Very* useful, once you get the hang of it, but where to begin?
My CLI/scripting experience is limited to using MacLynx [an old, now very broken v2.7.1 port that hasn't been updated since the '90s], a shell account with a previous ISP, used to run Lynx via telnet sessions and unpack tarred/gzipped web pages on-site [saves a lot of time, even if you don't save any space compressing GIFs/JPGs; there's a lot less handshaking between FTP client and server, when you're only uploading one big file]. Then there's AppleScript, a few batch files [mostly for use with the hot new Lynx 2.8.6 on a PC ;-) ], and a sadly incomplete vocabulary using `Run...' and the Command Prompt in Windows. I guess JavaScript doesn't count.
Not much to start with, is it?
So I'd kind of dismissed Linux as a truly amazing, but kind of out-of-my-reach system, at least until about a month ago. And in this past month I've been learning a *lot* about it.
Although I haven't actually tried DSL yet, from everything I've seen it's the best thing going, especially for older hardware. And it generally suits my aesthetic sense that `less is more' in software. Nice to see I'm not the only one who thinks that way. :-)
One thing that looks really nice about the FluxBox desktop environment is that, unlike KDE and GNOME it doesn't try too hard to look like the MacOS or Windows. And why should it? It's not. One thing I've noticed, learning to use Windows after being a Mac user all this time, is that the apparent similarities can sometimes be worse than the differences, especially when something that looks familiar doesn't work the way you expect it to.
Who knows? This might even be an easier system to learn. If not, at least it promises to be interesting. :-)
Patrick.
--------------
Q: What is the difference between
a joke, and a lie?
A: A lie tends to obscure the truth,
while a joke often reveals it.
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