[Techtalk] Why is life without X important? (was: Re: info)
Charlotte
charlotte.oliver at rcn.com
Fri Sep 6 16:51:36 EST 2002
> I had a fascinating experience a couple of weeks ago. I gave a 4 day
> linux workshop in NY to a bunch of folks who have been doing Windows
> systems administration for years. Now, I am someone who rarely
> bothers to run X on servers. And I have virtually no experience with
> any of the GUI admin tools. Although I have a desktop with KDE, and
> have gotten very used to using KDE, I still never admin that box
> using the GUI tools (except for printer setup).
>
> These folks were very uncomfortable with the command line, and spent
> actually quite a bit of time on their own learning how to use the GUI
> tools (which I couldn't help them much with, since I'd never used
> them).
I'm watching my boss go through that same thing. I was hired by a
Windows shop and finally convinced my management to let me set up a
linux server. My boss has never really used Windows, so the first thing
he wanted to know was how to get into XWindows.
But it was a server (and not one to serve XWindows), so I hadn't
installed it. I've showed him a few things but for the most part he's
looked suspiciously at the server and let me run it by myself.
I've suggested that we turn an old computer into a RedHat desktop so
that he can get used to admin before I let him run wild on my server.
*cough* OUR server. Right. :)
(He left himself logged in as root overnight once! I'll forgive
him...eventually.)
> But we did have fun using the GUI tools, then seeing what the GUI
> tools did to the config files. That's I think a really useful
> exercise, to get people into using the config files.
That's a good point - should he take me up on the challenge, maybe I can
try that with him.
Charlotte
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