> > My main problem with man is that I have to know the name of the command > > in order to access the man file. Well, there's a bunch of commands with > > not-always-intuitive names and I don't have the sharpest memory. > ;-) That why I use the GUIs
> What I'd like to see is a browsable front end. Not a GUI deal, just some > text-mode screen that uses handy things like the arrow/esc/enter keys to > let one move around dirs and files, letting one do useful stuff like 'read > docs', 'get quick help', 'install', 'run', etc. Plenty of such stuff like > that for DOS, but I don't think I've seen similar mentioned amongst linux > people. Sounds like you need Midnight Commander. The command is mc and it is on the RPM called mc The console guys love it. > > Another problem is that it can be bewildering when there are so many > choices for a given app (like text editors). Yep... Its called choice... and they are all free! But yes it can just blow your mind when you start. >On the MD8.1 download, they're > just dumped into a single RPMs directory - how on earth is a newbie > supposed to manage when the app he might or might not want is buried > somewhere in a list of 2000 files? With an all-too-often obscure > "xmc3-2.11-mightworkifyou'relucky.rpm" file name. Well there are tools to manage the installation of the RPM's The average newbie uses the GUI 'software manager'. In the command line I think the equivalent is urpmi . One of the neat things about Linux is that most applications have a front end GUI to look pretty, and a back end which can be driven from the command line. Since you are using command line you might like to browse Mandrake RPM's online You can do that at www.rpmfind.net Just select Mandrake and you will see all the RPM's and text descriptions of what they do. When you see one you want you can install it with urpmi ftp://address_of_package HTH derek >
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