Tim here, replying in-line. On January 26, 2022, Karen wrote: > you must be prepared to do programming if you are going to use > Linux fluidly, if at all. Like with other areas, it's not essential, but a bit of code or shell-scripting helps you get the most out of the system. A simple shell pipeline can turn a tedious manual process that takes days into a one-liner that can finish a task in seconds (I've had several of those just this week). Some flavors of Linux expect users to do more heavy-lifting and poking around under the hood; while others have a much softer touch with a lot more hand-holding. Choosing an appropriate distro can make a big difference. > So, why do you use Linux? what makes it worth the time the training > and the trial / error? I've used various flavors of Unix & Unix-likes since I was in high-school in the early 90s; and DOS before that. I learned to quickly navigate the file system and automate boring tasks and that's hard to give up. When I switch to a GUI, I regularly encounter frustratingly tedious things that I can't automate. Lists of data that are plainly displayed on the screen but I can't copy/paste them, or save them to a file, or otherwise manipulate them. Or the inability control everything with a keyboard, needing to reach for a mouse. > Oh, and is it your only operating system? Linux was my primary OS from ~1999 until about 5 years ago when I switched most of my machines to FreeBSD & OpenBSD. Mostly pushed because my Debian install kept breaking with upgrades that should have been mostly harmless. I haven't owned a Windows machine since WinME was the newest release, and while I own a Mac, it's an iBook G4 PowerPC unit from around 2006 and it serves me better as a machine to test OpenBSD code. > Want to ask the latter because I know someone who indeed uses Linux > exclusively, vowing never to touch windows again. If that wasn't me, now you know at least two of us. (grins) Hopefully that give you another data-point. -Tim _______________________________________________ Blinux-list mailing list Blinux-list@xxxxxxxxxx https://listman.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/blinux-list