This replies mainly to the whole thread that developed from my kill-app question, but also to a couple of other posts here on the RedHat psyche-list that've scratched the same itch -- or poked a thorn into it. <grin> I mean that, especially the thorn bit, in a friendly and grateful sense. The kill-app thread, with several names in it to whom I'd be honored to bow any day, went beyond my grasp almost at once. But it did eventually bring me something valuable -- not the answer I wanted, but a little enlightenment -- telling me for instance what the much-mentioned "metacity" is, that I hadn't the foggiest notion how to say, let alone discuss, and what my old kill-app command actually did under its GUI wrapper. (Both those are surprisingly non-obvious matters to the n00bish. I hadn't known where to look; they sprang full-grown from the foreheads of Alpha Plus Nerds, afaik.) I write hoping I may be of some help because, as it happens, the baby boomers have trodden on my heels, in their throngs and myriads, all the days of their lives. I'm just enough older so that they still hit most of the same decisions, two to seven years after I do; and that interval is already shrinking. As the boomers retire, they get the time and choice at last to break the MuddySlime chains that bound them at work. Some have spent year after year working under an OS they despise -- because the choice was not theirs, and because their ten- and twelve-hour days left them neither the hours nor the energy to learn another -- till now. They can spend years learning linux from the command line up, as if it were no better than DOS; some will, or will try. I did. Some would prefer to, knowing (for instance by having run pine at work, as I did, over a telnet link from an MS workstation) that keyboard-driven anything is good -- *after* you master it. Those whose job required *using* machines, often with a large stable of expert troubleshooters to back them up, will get very frustrated trying to learn from the command line, though -- and many even of the ones who try it will eventually give up. As I did. Not give up on getting away from MS; they'd kill first. Give up on learning a manual or three of commands, before ever getting any practical good out of the exercise, knowing as you start that the brand-new manual is already out of date for what you have. Patience grows with age, to be sure -- but selectively. Learning command lines is a lot like learning a natural language: your first (whether English, Finnish, Japanese, or Basque) takes ten or fifteen years *more* than you realize, because you do it by nature, and aren't aware of the incredible amount of work you do. Watch a child. But nobody, *nobody* learns foreign languages -- i.e., second to N-th languages -- that way unless there is no choice. It's best, sure, but it takes too long. The throngs & myriads aren't going to have the time, even if they had the patience, to learn the way all you otherwise excellent native coders did. Learning through a GUI is more like learning another language. You can use what you have (the first language, or the GUI) to enable you to absorb much bigger chunks at a time: big enough ones to start using much sooner. You may never achieve native command (though it can be done) -- but you can get past the helpless stage and back into eating, drinking, engineering, hiking and exploring new mountains (as opposed to exploring new words and phrases) way sooner. So you still have a foreign accent? Big honkin deal! How many different natural languages can your average computer a/o Net hotshot use well enough to pass for a native? Is the hotshot dumb because of that? Dumber in Finland than in Germany, if a native speaker of English only? Does having the entire works of an author or a century at my fingertips benefit me less because my linux is awkward? Straight answer: yes, of course it does -- and it's worth it. Especially as compared to being monolingual, or chained to the Gates of Hell. The big difference, of course, is that natural languages just grow, like bramble patches; even with the help of grammars and teachers, they're still basically practical first, and rational about tenth, if not hundredth. GUIs seem (if only to me in my ignorance) to grow like gardens -- with all the range between a formal garden at Versailles, say, and one in England that's designed (to the inch!) to *seem* natural ... So for what strollers a/o eaters are you gardening and GUIing? For what ones is RedHat guiing? Tell me, and especially those hordes of boomers about to come thundering down on you, *Please* tell us, how to choose gardens! We don't *want* to trample stuff -- and we don't go to Versailles for vegetables, either -- but we do have to eat, and we also love beauty, even with our aged eyeballs. -- RR 'Beartooth' Neuswanger, PhD, etc. <karhunhammas (at) lserv.com> Double Retiree, LUGger's Apprentice, Curmudgeon On Line -- Psyche-list mailing list Psyche-list@redhat.com https://listman.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/psyche-list
