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Warp wrote:
> Stephen <mca### [at] aoldot com> wrote:
>> You make a good case for Linux, there.
>
> At least for power users, who know what they are doing. I readily admit
> that Linux is, in some aspects, rather hard for beginners to approach.
Linux is Unix. The stated design goal of Unix was to be an OS for
experts. The whole system is predicated around the assumption that the
person at the keyboard is an expert.
Once you accept that it's supposed to be operated by an expert, most of
the design seems logical and straight-forward. That's why there's not
much feedback, why the OS does exactly what you tell it to without
question (you're an expert, right?), why all the configuration is easily
scriptable, and so forth.
I gather Unix (not necessarily Linux) is popular for servers, presumably
for this exact reason. (It's also popular for embedded applications, but
that presumably is due to its extreme portability and configurability
more than anything else...)
Now, if you're *not* an expert... then an OS designed from the ground-up
to support the kinds of things an expert wants is arguably not such a
great idea. From what I've seen, Linux now has various pretty
front-ends, but as soon as you need to configure something the front-end
doesn't support, or you import a config file from somewhere else, or
some other tool (such as a product install script) configures something
that the front-end can't handle, you suddenly get unceromoniously dumped
back into exprt-land.
Some day, I might run a Linux box again. But I don't think I'd set one
up for my grandma.
--
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*
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