Re: Restart after long silence

[jfm2@club-internet.fr]

> jfm2@club-internet.fr wrote:
> > 
> > >
> > > Once /usr is monted you have a plethora of editors but one day in a
> > > store I met a guy in trouble whose /usr was not being mounted.  I
> > > could tell him how to fix but the only editor available was VI and
> > > this I could not explain him as I could not explianed him emacs.  So
> > > it is enough to have auser freizendly editor it needs to be in /bin
> > > and not need libraries from /usr
> > >
> > 
> > should read "it is not enough to haved user friendly editor"
> 
> Two additions to this point.  
> 
> #1. /usr should not be a separate partition.  At least not on any 
> system operated by a novice.  For such users the '/' partition 
> should include the whole OS.  '/opt', '/var', and the rest can 
> be made into separate partitions after the user figures out why 
> he wants to do that.  '/home' could be made a separate partition 
> from the start however.  Maybe..

It is more robust but problem is that for a nvice it can be easier to
reinstall instead of fix problems.  In that case it is good to have a
separate /home.  Also there can be other reasons for alrtenative
editors not being reachable like editor not installed or destroyed
libraries.

> 
> #2. The easy editor new users need dose not exist yet.  If it 
> looks and behaves like edit.com from DOS, then there is no need
> to explain it's function.  After all, every popular GUI word 
> processor or text editor has the same behavior.
> 
> Joe, Pine, Pico, Jed and a few others are nice. On average it 
> takes an advanced novice ( good with computers but doesn't know
> these editors ) working on his own 30 minutes to figure out how 
> to use them.  That's with the Man page available. 
> 

What commands he needs for bsic fixing in short files like config
files tend to be?  Moving (arrows), deleting (the suppr key) and
insrting (self inserting).  These don't need man page reading.  Only
ones needing reading are opening a file, saving and exiting


> Turning a novice user with a text editor he doesn't understand 
> yet loose in '/etc' with root privileges is enough to make tech
> support start wetting the bed.
> 
> 

He does not have another person for adminsitering the box (private
user) so he is the system administrator and he has also has rm and cp
for make support wet the bed, so editor is not biggest problem.  But
if once the support tells hilm what has to be done, he answers how I
do it and support cannot give him aclear answer then either support
suicides or user is told to reinstall from scratch and eturns to
Windows

-- 
			Jean Francois Martinez

Project Independence: Linux for the Masses
http://www.independence.seul.org