Day Brown wrote: > > Redhat 5.2, the first I saw, was appallingly lacking in > handling errors.
First of all, RedHat is just one possible distribution. There are more than 100 different distributions. If RedHat doesn't suit you, another distribution might. Second, RedHat 5.2 is ancient history. Windows 286 was pretty appalling, too, but it would be silly to condemn MS-Windows on that basis. > Looking up a doc file on a 486 in dos was duck soup; > by the time the 486 could find the same info or man > segment on the drive in Linux, you could make duch soup. How come? In DOS you type 'help fdisk' and in Linux you type 'man fdisk'. What's the difference? > I downloaded DESQUVIEW and QEMM; fooled around with them > a little, but saw that it would take more to get it running. Doesn't this rather contradict the "DOS simple - Linux hard" refrain. My recollection is that several of my DOS applications were hard to get running. Lots a tinkering and frustration. Just like Linux. > No dos app I ever tried was so complex to try to install. Not even DESQVIEW? > I didnt need to worry about which distro of dos I had. I have DOS 3 running on my XT. There are several applications that happily work in DOS 6 that refuse to run in DOS 3. > If the newbie can get by on whatever comes on the distro cd, > then linux is simple. Keep in mind that some distros come with five CDs. That's a lot to "get by on". Later, when you are no longer a newbie, you'll be able to compile anything you want from source. > I have always used dos batch to create mnemonics to launch apps. > I was informed that you can do this with linux, Yes, indeed. For simple things, you can use aliases. For example, if you want to lauch 'newprog' which is in /home/day/apps, you can do: -------------------------------- alias n='/home/day/apps/newprog' -------------------------------- Then whenever you execute 'n' you will get it. Execute 'alias' all by itself to set a full list of current aliases. Execute 'unalias n' to remove that alias. To have your aliases come up automatically from system start, add them to your ~/.profile file. > and looked into ncurses. Not needed. A bash script (equivalent to a DOS .bat file) should be able to do everything you need. If you give us an example of what you are trying to do, we should be able to help. > Ncurses is not for a newbie, I agree. I never use it myself. > but simple dos batch is reasonably useful. Bash scripts are pretty similar to DOS batch files. DOS batch Bash script -------------------------------------------------------------------- %VAR% $VAR environmental variable REM # comment NOT ! negate following test NUL /dev/null "black hole" for burying output ECHO echo echo (more options in Bash) ECHO OFF set +v do not echo FOR %%VAR IN for var in "for" loop PAUSE sleep pause or wait an interval CHOICE select menu choice IF if if-test IF EXIST xxx if [ -e xxx ] test if file exists SET export set an environmental variable SHIFT shift left shift command-line arguments SGN -lt or -gt sign (of integer) ERRORLEVEL $? exit status CON stdin "console" (stdin) PRN /dev/lp0 (generic) printer device COM1 /dev/ttyS0 first serial port / - command option flag \ / directory path separator == = equal-to string comparison !==! != not-equal-to string comparison | | pipe @ set +v do not echo * * filename "wild card" > > file redirection (overwrite) >> >> file redirection (append) < < redirect output ----------------------------------------------------------------- There's lots of other stuff available for bash scripts, including 'read' (which acts like 'input' in BASIC) and a whole bunch of different DO loops. I suggest you start simple, using similar structures to your DOS batch files. I (and probably others) would be happy to help you. Perhaps you'd like to start by posting a DOS batch file here that you would like to run in Linux. We can discuss how to convert it. Cheers, Steven To unsubscribe from SURVPC send a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with unsubscribe SURVPC in the body of the message. Also, trim this footer from any quoted replies. More info can be found at; http://www.softcon.com/archives/SURVPC.html
