[aklug] Re: Slackware says "I told you so!"

* Christopher Howard <christopher.howard@frigidcode.com> [110226 14:58]:
> > GUI-types are crippling your brains. ;-) You are now free to flame...
> >
> > --Arthur Corliss
> > Live Free or Die
>
> I enjoyed the article. Another way to put it: If you understand how
> something works, you are going to be better working with it. Unix forces
> you to understand how it works, so you will be able to accomplish more
> and better things with it than you would with operating systems that
> take the opposite approach.
>
> However, it didn't address more fundamental issues: Is it necessarily a
> good thing for a person to be required to learn how his software works
> in order to benefit from it? For example: a person drives a car to work
> every day, but he doesn't understand how internal combustion engines
> work. Does that necessarily mean he is dumb? Maybe it just isn't his
> area of expertise. Maybe he doesn't have the time to learn how cars work.
>
> You imply vim is "superior" to pico, nano, et cetera. But your unstated
> assumption was that "superior" means "I can accomplish a whole lot more
> with it than with other editors because I know what I'm doing." But when
> my buddy at work has to spend 20 minutes looking through a Linux
> reference book to figure out how to edit two lines in a config file
> using vim, it doesn't seem very "superior" to him.
>
> My answer to my own question is: yes, ultimately it is always better to
> thoroughly understand any framework you use. But getting from point A to
> point B is a bit more challenging in the real world. Which is why, last
> time I checked, Ubuntu is still more popular than Slackware and Gentoo
> combined, even though they are clearly "superior" distros.
  Well, I'm going to come "out of the closet" now. I have been using
  ubuntu and mint lately.
  
  Slackware has proven to be much more stable on my Gateway GT5422E
  (don't buy one) than has either ubuntu and mint. However, the
  pragmatics are thus: I'm a programmer, a coder, as much as I take
  pride in being able to bend the OS to my liking, the ubuntu
  approach is frankly <blush> easier. I'd rather code for money and
  not spend as much time tweaking my OS. (for which I am not paid).
  
  On the other hand, I have had to take some pains to deal with the
  fact that both ubuntu and mint have a way of unexpectedly shutting
  down applications and from time to time just drop me out of X.
  Arthur, on the other hand, I know to be both a coder and a
  sysadmin, but (perhaps) more of a sysadmin and I can sure as heck
  see slackware as being more amenable to a sysadmin.

  As for vim being "superior" to pico, nano, emacs et. al., I gotta
  say I love vim, but I wouldn't wish it on anyone who can't relate
  to it. Even tho' us vimmers are of the Master Race.....

-- 
Tim 
tim at johnsons-web.com or akwebsoft.com
http://www.akwebsoft.com
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