[CS-FSLUG] Still Flogging the Console Horse

[Ed Hurst]

On Fri, 26 Aug 2005, mash. wrote:

> Debian stock of course...
> mc, naim, mutt, emacs, nano... ect. all a kid could want.

Mutt will never foul my computer's innards. I use Pine because there
are no arcane keystrokes hidden within a poorly written manual. I've
tried it, so my prejudice is at least partially justified. If I have to
"fix" the keystrokes one at a time, it's only worse.

Emacs -- and vi -- are designed to send ordinary users into apoplectic
fits. Both are badly broken because their use is anything but obvious.
The designers worked hard to make them difficult, and have succeeded.
Emacs -- I already have an OS, thank you.

Nano is at least intelligent enough to show it's primary keystrokes by
default. However, it lacks color of any sort. At least the new Joe
provides syntax highlighting. Mc is one of the smartest things ever
coded for Linux and Unix.

Now, all that is merely peripheral. I've used Debian before, in several
guises, but I don't recall an option to leave out X. Maybe it's been
too long. My primary complaint is Debian never worked on any of my
laptops, except in the guise of Libranet. However, Libranet offered
almost no useful options in choosing packages. You either take it all
or get next to nothing. That was Knoppix's main failing (along with
some mixed and badly broken packaging; it's not designed for
installing). Plain Debian never detected my hardware worth anything,
and I wound up configuring everything by hand. It was always
complicated, even when compared to FreeBSD. Shall we discuss good old
'dpackage' which made even coders weep?

Debian was never intended to attract the ordinary user. I'm just not
quite geek enough, nor do I intend to become that much of a geek. I
might just possibly be able to sell the idea of console operations to
those new to Open Source, but I couldn't possibly sell Debian as it is.
I'm looking for something manageable without X for older hardware,
something that won't stick me with incredibly stupid dependencies,
especially requiring X for something like the ghostscript printing
engine. It also needs to be manageable by mere mortals.

Care to add some more to this, Sir?


-- 
Ed Hurst
-----------
Applied Bible -- http://users.tconline.net/~softedges/
Plain & Simple Computer Help -- http://ed.asisaid.com/
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