On Sat, 27 May 2000, Oliver L. Plaine Jr. wrote:
Hi Olly,
>Sat, 27 May 2000 10:07:33
>
>How did all of you solve this problem when you were a newbie? I have
>hundreds of unknown to me programs on this Mandrake...I discover what
>they do by accident.
For this, a thing called book exists. When I started out with Linux
(Redhat 5.0), I got myself a book called 'The Official RedHat 5 Linux
guide'. A lot of things are explained in that, including RPM's. By the
way: RPM stands for Redhat Package Manager. Another mystery solved.
> Is there a listing of programs and RPM's decoded into
>something that will enable me to determine the purpose? or do I have
>to search them out one by one, only to discover that the program is
>not something I have a use for?
Run GnoRPM or Kpackage. You will find a nice tree-structure on the
left. Click around a bit and on the right you will see a description of
the purpose of the program. Including an uninstall button at your service,
so if you don't like the program you can whop it away then and there.
> I just found one that calculates "molecular weights"..I am
>sure it is an excellent program, but I am also sure there are many
>here that I could get more use from., if I only knew about them?
www.linuxberg.com
www.linuxapps.com
www.freshmeat.org
www.yahoo.com and search for "linux app" and "linux program"
> To me it appears that program names and RPM listings are
>cryptic, the name SAMBA does not explain much....electric eyes? blue
>fish?...where is it explained?.
SAMBA is a general knowledge thing in the computer world, not specifically
Unix. It is a tool to hook up windowze and Unix machines.
Something about the program names to get used to, indeed. But again, on
the above URL's you can find them. Look them up and read more.
Originally Unix was a system that was only used by developers, and created
by developers. Fast, simple, short commands.
rm, cd, grep, nroff, which, vi, sed, su, those are some examples. I guess
it has become a tradition for Unix-minded people to stay away from the
Micro$oft naming conventions for programs a bit, to make a difference. To
that, these programs are not commercial. THey are written by people who
just have fun in writing programs and giving them away (that IS what they
do). So if I had fun in writing a program called Wobbly that does some
calculations, that is my prerogative. No business would probably get that,
but then, a company BUYS stuff (normally). Which company would take a
"Wobbly" program seriously? Bring it out as "Calcmaster 2000", and you can
sell it.
Paul
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Finally I know how many stars there are:
MANY!
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