What Debian list are you talking about? You can just type "aptitude" from a
command prompt and get a nice list of packages by category with full
descriptions. I'm surprised no one mentioned this as it was one of the
first things I learned. When I got started, Aptitude wasn't really in use,
so I used "dselect" instead which does much the same thing. You can also
visit http://packages.debian.org/ and browse by category. I'm not sure what
you mean by upgrading from an unknown site. There is a large list of Debian
mirrors which you can browse with any web browser or ftp client. Look at
ftp://mirrors.kernel.org/debian/ for one example. All of the packages are
cryptographically signed to prevent tampering and they're verified to be
complete before they're installed, something you almost never find in
Windows and DOS.
I meant it when I said doing the install isn't hard. You can pretty much
just press Enter at the prompts and it does the right thing unless it can't
find your hardware. The only exception is if you want to do your own fancy
hard drive partitioning, but it sounds like you'll be using a dedicated
machine so you can pretty much accept the defaults. What I meant by being
easily able to fix things is that Squeeze is very stable, so it isn't as
though your system will become unbootable unless you do something really
obvious. The package manager won't let you do anything really bad without
warning you. The worst you would have to do is reinstall a package.
Yes, Shellworld uses FreeBSD, but for practical purposes, it's the same as
far as Lynx and console programs. Linux is a form of Unix and most Unix
programs are portable enough to run on almost any form of Unix, whether it's
a BSD variant or Linux. You won't find that kind of portability in DOS.
That's why the DOS ports of Unix programs require djgpp and dos4gw or some
other extender. The idea of djgpp is to be able to compile portable
programs in a DOS environment.
Actually, I spent weeks fighting with packet drivers and dial-up networking
in DOS because I wanted to run Lynx on my own system. I never got it
working and couldn't find a way to load my packet driver, screen reader,
TCP/IP stack, dialer and web browser without it being so painfully slow that
it wasn't worth it, besides not finding a packet driver for my network card
in the first place, not to mention the memory issues. I used a dial-up
shell account for years because it was so much faster and easier, then
switched to Windows 98.
On 3/5/2013 9:39 AM, Karen Lewellen wrote:
smiling,
I am in the dictionary under in most cases.
I detailed what happened on the install attempt. I agree fixing is not hard
if one knows what one is doing...witch's been my point.
As for the nicely packaged aspect of Linux, I am not sure everyone agrees on
that.
In fact you are expected to install from unknown sites if you are going to
upgrade and the like.
Do not mistake me, as I said I applaud all the versatility. What I do not
get is the difficulty in reaching that versatility.
I asked on the debian list for example to see a list of all the packages by
category...no one Could provide this.
Indeed the choice of wordpefect is a choice, you might not install every Dos
program out there...but you can find understandable information and choose
on your own what might be worth exploring.
because a few have hand picked for you what you really need, if you are new
you might never find what might be useful.
Ease in understanding is my point here.
Individual choice should be easy to engage in, no matter if others do not
think they need the program.
I mean how many people use lillypond here? Or movgrabe for that matter?
I do not expect anyone else to have to use it just because I want to.
Karen
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