On Fri, 24 Jan 2003, John Summerfield wrote: > On Fri, 24 Jan 2003 17:21, you wrote: > > > Comment: > > > I just had a friend the other night try to upgrade a Windows98 system > > > to WindowsXP. The installer Wizard let him without any complaint. No > > > warnings about compatibility issues or anything. He then installed a > > > wireless card with drivers and that install trashed his system. When he > > > went to recover using the supplied XP tools it further trashed his > > > system so he could not even boot. He called tech support for the > > > wireless card and was told it is an operating system error and once he > > > got that fixed just download the newest drivers from the website. Some > > > upgrade path, a little more "heavy lifting" type programming all around > > > would have saved my friend a frustrating couple of days. > > > > I also wish that every OS would give me the same upgrade path debian gives > > me. > > I'm not sure where this is going, and I may regret this.... > > I've just this minute finished upgrading a Pentium from Woody to Unstable. > > Taken singly, it was easy enough I guess, but I'd hate to do ten of them. > > OTOH, RHL with which I'm much more familiar, is a piece of cake in comparison, > especially with lots of them. > > Sure, there's a lot to like in Debian, but the installer sure isn't one of > them.
I agree about the installer, but I was talking about something else: you have a potato and want to upgrade to woody. (That's debian 2.2 and 3.0). BTW: the fact that "unstable", that keeps getting updated, almost doesn't break, shows you how solid a base debian is. > > > > Quote from article: > > > "I still believe Linux is an extension of the Unix paradigm. It's a > > > command-line-focused approach that's not particularly designed to be > > > user friendly. The Windows approach is very different. > > > > Read: windows is not scriptable. > > Not _quite_ true. Some years ago I write a script (standard dosish batch file) > to pack some data up and send it off to an MVS system using the standard NT > ftp client. However, I never found anything to compare with what I could do > in OS/2 where I could easily customise its equivalent to the Windows > registry. You can do *some things*, but not *everything* > > > > > I will say that > > > the adoption of Linux is likely to be bounded by how many companies are > > > happy with Unix. Will it have an ability to be persuasive to people that > > > it's a more cost-effective version of Unix? Yes. For us the key > > > challenge in 2003 will be speaking to Unix users about why they ought > > > to use Windows on Intel rather than Linux on Intel." > > > > I always thought that it was easier to write a GUI to a scriptable system > > than to make a GUI system scriptable... > > > > > > Aparantly I was right. > > As best I can figure it, Bill hasn't tried. Either that, or the facility is an > extra-charge item. Most people would regard OS/2 s a GUI-based system, though > in truth you can run it without a GUI or even replace the GUI with another. > I've done both. > > And, it's well scriptable. You can do almost anything in REXX (a standard, > fully-documented component of the base OS) that you can do in Perl (and you > can do almost anything in Perl you can do in REXX). Try to print a word document, without popping-up the GUI. -- Tzafrir Cohen mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.technion.ac.il/~tzafrir
