May i suggest that a little knowledge is a dangerous thing? Case in point, David, ... what, pray, is linux 5.2?? There's no such thing as far as I know. On Wed, 5 Dec 2001, David Poehlman wrote: > I have not been watching this thread but just tuned in and have some > passages I want to respond to below with responses marked with dp: > > ----- Original Message ----- > From: "John G. Heim (26 2-9887)" <jheim@doit.wisc.edu> > To: <blinux-list@redhat.com> > Sent: Wednesday, December 05, 2001 11:14 AM > Subject: Re: Hello! > > > At 04:41 PM 12/3/01 -0500, you wrote: > >install. > >May I now simply suggest that you are wrong if for no other reason than > >that I blind person will be very hard pressed to install Windows at all > >without assistance? > > I'm not sure what I said that you think this disproves. My point is that > it > takes more knowledge to run a linux machine than a Windows machine. I > never > said windows can be installed without sighted assistance. The original > questioner doesn't have a speech synthesizer so he can't install either > linux or windows without sighted assistance. > dp: it is possible to install windows without sighted assistance but you > need to know how to do it. I am not certain that this is the case with > linux but would wager that if the propper planning were done and the > propper scripts available, it could be. > > About six months ago, I had a lightning strike at my home and lost the > hard > drive on both my Windows 95 and linux 5.2 machines. I bought 2 new hard > drives and got Windows millenium and red hat 7.1 from the university. > Since > I don't have a synthesizer, I needed sighted assistance for both > installs. > The linux install took a lot longer and took much more technical > knowledge. > > But that's okay. Of course it takes more knowledge to install linux than > windows millenium. Linux is way more powerful than windows millenium. > > dp: I take it that you mean that linux out of the box is way more > powerful than windows millennium or any windows system for that matter > and I won't take issue with that. I would say though that again, with > propper nknow how, you can do anything in windows that you can do in > linux I am a windows user but a linux fan by the way so I am not > bashing linux but want to keep the record streight. > > Windows is "easier" mailnly because doesn't do as much as linux. A good > example of this point is file permissions. Can you even set file > permissions in windows millenium? It doesn't really matter because you > don't need them anyway. > dp: you can set file permissions but not in the way you think of file > permissions. you can tell windows that you want files to behave in > certain ways such as be hidden, system or read only files if you know > how to do it. > > If you're going to use linux, you probably need to learn about file > permissions. How hard is that? Well, for some people it might be hard. > > Comparing apples to oranges? Yes! In fact, that's partly my point. Linux > does bzillions of things windows doesn't. That's why it takes so much > more > knowledge to use. If you're going to use linux, you should be prepared > to > go through the process of acquiring that knowledge. Not everybody is > going > to want to do that. > dp: I'd like a list of things that windows does not do that linux does. > I can find a way to do them. > > Note too that my own example is rather esoteric. Most machines come with > Windows pre-installed. Even if you replace the hard drive, you can > usually > boot from the old one, install windows on the new one, and then reboot > from > the new one -- all without sighted assistance. > > dp: none the less, I have started from an oss less hd and installed > windows from scratch with little to no sighted assistance and no screen > reader. > > -- > John G. Heim > WiscINFO Customer Service Coordinator > Division of Information Technology > jheim@doit.wisc.edu > 608-262-9887 > > > > _______________________________________________ > > Blinux-list@redhat.com > https://listman.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/blinux-list > > > > > _______________________________________________ > > Blinux-list@redhat.com > https://listman.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/blinux-list > -- Janina Sajka, Director Technology Research and Development Governmental Relations Group American Foundation for the Blind (AFB) Email: janina@afb.net Phone: (202) 408-8175 Chair, Accessibility SIG Open Electronic Book Forum (OEBF) http://www.openebook.org Will electronic books surpass print books? Read our white paper, Surpassing Gutenberg, at http://www.afb.org/ebook.asp Download a free sample Digital Talking Book edition of Martin Luther King Jr's inspiring "I Have A Dream" speech at http://www.afb.org/mlkweb.asp Learn how to make accessible software at http://www.afb.org/accessapp.asp