Ubuntu (Linux); my first experience of...

Jan,

I disagree. I think -- while the distribution in the complexity with which most people deal with the world may be widening -- in general people today live in a no-more-complex world than people living 100 years ago. In many ways people live in a *simpler* world! For instance, think of cars: 40 years ago, the "average" person probably still knew how to change the oil and air filter, even tweak the carburetor a little between seasons or if they'd be driving over mountains. Today, the average person knows little to nothing of vehicle maintenance -- they just take it into the dealer every 7,500 miles, and things like carburetor adjustments no longer exist due to fuel injection with a computer controlling the oxygen intake. Similarly, 100 years ago, the average person knew how to hunt and farm, whereas today the average person only knows where the nearest 7-11, Starbucks, McDonalds, and a grocery store is.

Of course, the average person today knows many things people 100 years ago didn't -- how to write e-mail, how to play a DVD -- but my point is that the world is no more *complex* today for the *average* person, just... different.

What country did you say you're in? Here in the U.S. there's a TV show, "Are you smarter than a fifth grader?" where they routintely demonstrate that a lot of what's learned in grade school is lost in adulthood. School standards today in math and science are decidedly lower than what they were 40 years ago, and not just in primary education: An average EE today learns far less math than one who graduated in in '60s, and while they do know how to create web pages and program microcontrollers, the point again is that much of what they know is just different -- but not necessarily more complex -- than what would have been taught decades back.

The ability to learn does become slower as we age; that's an unfortunate fact. However, a significant decrease in many people is because they *don't* learn new things on a regular basis: It's no surprise that people who are used to learning all the time are better at it as they age than people who have, e.g., a manufacturing job where they do the same thing for 40 years. Just as many

60 year old men who've been working out most every day for their entire lives are in better shape than a 40-year-old couch potato.

---Joel

On a sunny day (Thu, 1 Mar 2007 11:36:54 -0800) it happened "Joel Kolstad" wrote in :

I think in big lines we agree here, different knowledge. That is actually dangerous for humanity, if only very few know to make for example a chip (semiconductor), and because of some disaster those people get killed, then it would set the rest of humanity way back. For example a lot of tech the Romans had was lost during the dark ages in Europe. An asteroid or WW3 could do that to us.

Netherlands.

If I have to believe Hollywood productions ... right... Few languages, no geography, bad math... I have been to the states many times, for long times.... People know _other_ things...

Well, I think it is more complex, and especially the part people have hands on experience with, relative to all the learned stuff, becomes smaller and smaller.

I pretty much learn all the time, many different fields. Some things I try to understand and I notice that I have problems, having to go over the quantum computer again.... then you find once you finally find the right papers by the right prof, most people only _think_ they know it, just like electronics.

I have this thing that I want to be able to do it myself. Maybe good maybe bad, that includes that car too, it took apart an rebuild the engine. Made some mistakes, learned from that, was fun, saved some money too. Others go watch baseball, I write a program for example.

Fine with me :-)

Late at night, by candle light, Jan Panteltje penned this immortal opus:

learn about ourselves,

computers...

Linux itself screwed up, OO is fine. It kind of insisted on some critical updates so I let it run. After that neither the updater nor the system configurator worked. Running them from console gave some hints, after asking around I found the update breaks python regularly. So find the relevant python distro, set it up and install. A couple of hours watching gobble-de-gook running across the screen while it fetches whatever else seems to be missing. No joy, won't run until the packagedb is fully updated and portage broke too. So run pkgdb.update or some such. Chomps around on the HD for a couple of hours then gives up with an error report stating clearly it's a bug. Won't tell which nor can I find any report on it. This is where I go and do something that might have a chance of succeeding.

OO and solitaire work fine but the wife gripes that xfreecell doesn't look and feel like MS freecell. Most everything else appears to be OK but I'm not even thinking of trying to update any of it.

I've set up a few FreeBSD servers in my time, so I'm not unfamiliar with CLI. FBSD has the added advantage that the documentation is clear, consistent and up to date. Last time I looked Xwindows on FBSD sucked big time.

- YD.

--
Remove HAT if replying by mail.

On a sunny day (Thu, 01 Mar 2007 19:12:18 -0300) it happened YD wrote in :

Yes, well..... I admit that things like 'pkgdb.update' or whatever it is called in a distro, have their bugs... I can only make a few suggestions. I have on PC with several Linuxes (Grub boot loader selects at power up), and much of my _data_ is on different harddisks. I like to work with source, so I have to compile the same stuff for all these older and newer systems.... sometimes I just grab stuff from an other system. What can I say? Get one distro, the simplest one, compile a kernel and its modules (the ones you need). Now after that brain stretching (kernel config) stretch some more by making a new Grub..... You know all that if you came from BSD I suppose. For a person who only wants open office to work.. get a complete distro that has it, with printer drivers etc..., have them run as non-root, and if a new Debian, or whatever you use, comes out, buy a new harddisk, and install the new stuff, test it, mount the old harddisk as hdb or something, ln -s (softlink) it to something in the current distro, and continue. Even that will be too difficult for some people, but I do not think updating MS applications is easier, but maybe it is as I never do that. Usually it does not even install right the first time (MS drivers etc).

But in my view it is _faster_ to grab a good Unix book, and a Linux PC, and just learn the basics. I clearly remember (I used Unix at work in 1979 or so) the day I decided (MSDOS days, and we were discussing other OSes too) to buy that Unix book. It went on the bookshelf, but when I had the SLS Linux command line, I grabbed it, and went over it again command by command. 'What do I type?' And there were so many different commands, that I had many pages of notes, how to format a floppy, how to mount, how to make a swap partition, how to

-anything-. It took years and still I sometimes know a command exists, but no idea what it is called. And I find new ones everyday too. In the old days you could hit tab twice to get the number of commands, but now I did it this way: ls /usr/bin/ > q ls /usr/local/bin/ >> q ls /usr/X11R6/bin >> q ls /usr/local/sbin/ >> q joe q I count 5346 lines.

5346 commands.

And there are more, some are not in those dirs, but maybe for example in a compile directory, linked to an icon. Each command has a manual..... some like 'firefox' can do a lot. Each command has command line options.

You cannot expect somebody to know 5300 commands just like that (or ever). Therefore Linux is not for dummies. Oh well :-)

But you do not have to know them all, but any Unix user should know some basic ones. I do not normally use .deb or .rpm to 'upgrade' and kernels I get from

and install myself.... No problems. Just look for the source (yes open office is big, so is mozilla, in that case grab a binary for your system), because usually you also need the related headers..... Those .deb and .rpm systems break as soon as their database is not updated after you installed something alien from source. Leave the OS itself as is, unless you want to config a kernel. Actually this subject is too big to write a guide on Usenet.....

Ubuntu is faster to release new features,that doesn't make it better, It just means there's less testing done.

Bye. Jasen