Re: Dude, where's my network?

From: Hiawatha Bray (watha_at_monitortan.com)
Date: 02/08/05 

Date: Tue, 08 Feb 2005 02:58:30 GMT

Heny Townsend wrote:

> ps wrote:
>> in article pan.2005.02.08.00.22.28.104182@yahoo.com, Dave Uhring at
>> daveuhring@yahoo.com wrote on 2/7/05 4:22 PM:
>>
>>
>>>On Mon, 07 Feb 2005 16:00:49 -0800, ps wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>>Is it really necessary to be an ass to someone trying to learn about
>>>>Solaris? This group would serve well to welcome new users not turn them
>>>>off to it.
>>>
>>>"Being an ass" is attempting to run a UNIX system from a "file manager".
>>>If you are too lazy or stupid to learn how to use a terminal you have no
>>>place in the UNIX world.
>>>
>>>User-Agent: Microsoft-Entourage/11.1.0.040913
>>>
>>>Take your complaints to the newsgroups in *windows*.
>>>
>>
>>
>> *** off YIF, Entourage is an OS X app, and my complaint is with YOU not
>> with my newsreader. It's ignorant people like you that drive potential
>> Solaris users to Linux or Windows.
>
> You may all be interested to know that this guy (the OP) is a
> journalist. I've seen his column and presumably he's trying to evaluate
> the new open-source-X86-system-on-the-block for a future column. Most
> likely he's trying to drive it the way a naive user would. I agree -
> I've never done anything with the file manager other than to "drag it to
> the recycle bin", but Solaris boosters might want to play nice for once.
>

Yes, I am a journalist, but don't let that bother you. I'm just doing this
on my own time. I might write about it at some point; we'll see.

I am kinda dismayed to see this thread turn into the sort of slanging match
I usually find on Macintosh sites. I figured Solaris types were all
middle-aged sysadmins who were used to dumb questions. Oh well...

Good point about the point-n-click approach. It's not just Windows either.
Mac does it too, of course, but most apps in Linux are amenable to the PNC
approach, so I figured it'd work here too. I have nothing against shells,
but I don't go out of my way to use 'em. In any case, I have little
patience with the philosophy that I prove my manhood by performing a
computing task in the most difficult manner possible. Even the Linux
bigots are getting out of that way of thinking, which is why Linux is
beginning to approach usability for ordinary folk. Why, I'm using it right
now. My hands...they're soaking in it! :-)

Anyway, I opened a shell and typed man sys-unconfig and there it was. So
never mind about that troff stuff. Then I tried running sys-unconfig in
the shell, and it started up as well. How cool.

All this blundering raises a question. Why'd I have to open a shell to do
this? There's a Run Application icon on the menu. I clicked it and up
popped a command window. Yesterday I typed both these commands into that
window, and of course nothing happened. It was only after unsuccessfully
doing this that I came crawling back here, confused as heck. In Solaris,
you have a window for running commands, but the commands don't run. But
type the exact same commands in a shell window, and the commands do run.
What's the Run Application window for if it won't run applications? In
Windows, this feature works fine. If you know the app name and path, you
just type it into the run app window and it fires up. Solaris doesn't seem
to work that way. Why not?

Thanks. Now I'll go see if I can get DHCP fired up...