Are radical changes needed for Desktop Linux?

[John Skaller]

On Fri, 2005-07-08 at 22:57 -0400, kanem wrote:
> I liked 'this guy's' (http://tinyurl.com/b33wr) response to that article
> you mention.

I don't. He makes a really naive mistake encapsulated here:

"What I answer to my John Doe's that want to install Linux is: read
documentation first."

which shows he hasn't got the faintest idea. I'm a programmer,
I hardly ever read manuals, and I certainly don't read them FIRST:
what's the point of reading something about a tool you don't have?

No, don't be silly. You install the tool first, then you try
it out, and when you make mistakes you get help automatically;
for example:

skaller at rosella:~$ ocaml -urgle
/usr/local/bin/ocaml: unknown option `-urgle'.
Usage: ocaml <options> <object-files> [script-file]
options are:
  -I <dir>  Add <dir> to the list of include directories
....
  -help  Display this list of options
  --help  Display this list of options

Oooo I'll have to remember --help!  Hey:

skaller at rosella:~$ ocamldoc --help
Usage : /usr/local/bin/ocamldoc [options] <files>
Options are :
  -version      Print version and exit
...
 -help  Display this list of options
  --help  Display this list of options

Hmm .. --help works for that too .. 

skaller at rosella:~$ gcc --help
Usage: gcc [options] file...
Options:
  -pass-exit-codes         Exit with highest error code from a phase
  --help                   Display this information
..

Hey hey, an unrelated command and it also has --help ..
maybe that's a convention .. I must remember that ..

This is how people learn. NOT reading manuals. Manuals are
for experts that already know enough to understand the
structure so they know where in the manual to find some
detail they've forgotten.. and perhaps pick up something
new at the same time, but accident.

It has to work like a game. Did you REALLY read the Doom
manual before you tried to play it??

-- 
John Skaller <skaller at users dot sourceforge dot net>
Download Felix: http://felix.sf.net
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