[Lancaster] Re: Install Fest

[Matt S Trout]

On Sat, Sep 03, 2005 at 09:39:05PM +0100, Ken Hough wrote:
> >Newbies are only scared of command lines because people teach them to be
> >scared of them. My gran can't make head nor tail of a windows desktop but
> >I was able to explain what
> >
> >ps ax | grep foo | grep -v grep | awk '{print $1}' | xargs kill
> >
> >meant in about ten minutes.
> >
> 
> You must be joking!
> 
> I cut my teeth back in the days of DOS, so am not frightened of the 
> command line and do use it alongside and within a GUI, but at the 
> moment, I do not understand the command line above.

Easy - grab all processes, select the ones that contain "foo" but not "grep",
take the first thing on the line (the pid) and feed 'em into kill.

Most linux users would probably just type "killall foo" - the effect is
largely the same; my version has the advantage that it works (bar ps -ef and
$2 on SysV) on pretty much every *n?x system in existence. Then, I'm not
really a Linux user - I'm a *n?x user who happens to use Linux as their
most common flavour.

> The majority of people today have got used to using a GUI and hence the 
> command line is alien to them. Fact! We are not going to change that in 
> the space of a couple of hours.

Correct. The people who aren't even used to a GUI, however, will often find
a command line easier if you show them how to use it.

We teach children out of picture books, and adults out of books with words;
the common paradigm of computer teaching is to never take people beyond the
"child" stage, but if you're faced with an adult who wants to learn as an
adult teaching them how to use a command line is often a far better technique.

I'm mostly playing devil's advocate here, mind - which is why I didn't
suggest Slack base at all, I suggested a derived distro which has a GUI
software installer and configurator.
 
> Let's get real. What can we achieve in a couple of hours?

Install SuSE/Mandrake/Ubuntu if they've got hardware that'll handle it. If
they haven't, I still say better to try *something*, especially a something
that you know you've got an expert on the mailing list for, than to say
"no, you'll have to use a pirated copy of Windows 95, sorry".

-- 
     Matt S Trout       Specialists in perl consulting, web development, and
  Technical Director    UNIX/Linux systems architecture and automation. Mail
Shadowcat Systems Ltd.  mst (at) shadowcatsystems.co.uk for more information

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