On Thu, 7 Jul 2005 21:15:33 +0200 Brice Méalier <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> generally, the name of the program matches the name of the binary! the > best example is what you are telling above with firefox... But what if you don't know the binary? Even on Debian, one could have none, or several, web browsers installed. I more frequently than not invoke a given application from a command line but a new user may be uncomfortable with that. If he's running X, for instance, his only adjustment (from Windows) might be that he needs to type "program &" rather than just "program" if he doesn't want his shell hanging on him. However, other than perhaps firefox or mozilla (and opera, of course), there's no real association between a program's name on Windows vs. a similar-functioning app on Linux. For instance, how does a newbie come to the conclusion that "kopete" is (one choice for) an instant messaging client? If he's using KDE, he can surmise that, because Menu- >Internet lists it and tells the user that it's an instant messaging client. To put this in perspective, I was a new user of a Mac OSX system a few weeks ago. Took me sometime to figure out that "Safari" was their web browser. The fact that I could open a terminal and have a reasonably similar (i.e., Unix environment) is certainly useful, but it didn't provide any additional help; if I could have done "safari &" I would have done so, but that's beside the point, as I still had to discover the association that "safari" is "web browser". > also I think that new users do not have to use intensively the command > line but they should be aware that this command line is a way far from It goes without saying that you can do a whole lot more in it compared to the Windows command.com environment. > Brice Méalier -- ------------------------------------------------------------------------ David E. Fox Thanks for letting me [EMAIL PROTECTED] change magnetic patterns [EMAIL PROTECTED] on your hard disk. -----------------------------------------------------------------------
