Linked by Adam S on Sun 6th Apr 2003 17:18 UTC
This is my reaction to Tsu Dho Nimh's "Migrating to Linux not easy for Windows users" featured on Linuxworld.com recently. It's not a response, I'm not challenging his opinions, which I feel are not only valid, but mostly right, it's just a reaction.
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. I mean, imagine being able to just tell your computer that you wanted to upgrade to the newest version of Mozilla, and it does it. That certainly seems a lot easier and a lot more powerful than 'apt-get' or 'rpm -ivh whatever ...'
Actually that's precisely what apt-get does "apt-get mozilla" upgrades you to the newest version of mozilla. More importantly "latest version" can be defined to your taste:
a) nightly build from CVS
b) latest source files to be built on your system
c) latest build in a binary repository
d) latest testing build in a binary repository
e) latest version your company, distribution.. supports
etc..
Now you've been corrected and the normal reaction here is to just ignore it. I'd like you to stop and think for a second about the broader issue that caused you to make this mistake:
Command lines are more powerful than guis. GUIs force you to play 20 questions. At even given time the GUI gives you a small number of choices you select from those choices and are then presented with more choices. Over time the computer is able to determine what action out of all possible computer actions you want it to perform. With a command line you simply tell it what action you want it to perform.
What you are asking for is the exact opposite of "simplicity" (i.e. a very shallow learning curve) but rather "complexity" (power and features).