Ken <tyl### [at] pacbellnet> wrote:
: I have thought seriously about it but every time I hear the words linux and
: unix I also hear the words compiling and make files and such. This implies
: to me that a compiler would be necessary and consequently a programmers
: background to use it. I have neither the time nor inclination to learn how
: to become a programmer at my age.

  Who said you have to know C-programming to use UNIX? There's absolutely
no need.
  And I think there are compiled versions of povray for Linux. And even if
you had to compile a custom version, you still don't need to know anything
about C-programming. Usually it's enough to just type "make newxwin" at the
command line.

:   I really think UNIX'es are popular among college students and computer
: industry professionals but I don't really think it is for the average Joe
: computer user who cares little for how it works only that it does.

  UNIX _is_ harder to learn than windows, but it's getting easier and
easier with all these Linux distributions which have all the fancy GUIs,
graphical configuration programs, etc. I'm not sure because I have never
used Linux, but I think that nowadays you can use most of its features
without ever having to type anything at the command line.

  I think that the popularity of UNIX amongst professionals is that it
really is a good OS and you can do what you want instead of having to do
only what "they" allow you to do.
  No GUI will ever get even close to command line tools like grep, sed,
perl, and all those handy UNIX tools. With just the sh-shell and a couple
of those tools you can make things that need a complete programming language
compiler/interpreter in Windows (this is absolutely great when making CGI
scripts, for example).
  Of course a good GUI is very handy for many things. I use Win98 every day.
But I would feel very limited without 4DOS. (Actually I feel very limited
without all those handy unix tools...)

  As someone has said, a child points at the thing he wants with his finger
while an adult says what he wants :)

-- 
main(i,_){for(_?--i,main(i+2,"FhhQHFIJD|FQTITFN]zRFHhhTBFHhhTBFysdB"[i]
):5;i&&_>1;printf("%s",_-70?_&1?"[]":" ":(_=0,"\n")),_/=2);} /*- Warp -*/

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