Mail Archives: opendos/2000/07/08/21:08:58
Paul -
One of "Bills" great successes was getting computing to the "masses".
Part of that success was much "isolation" of the user from the computer.
This list is "technical" in nature, cause most of the subscribers are
interested in or
fighting against the technical part of things.
To really "use" the computer effectively, the user must know something about
how it works.
-- The person with a car that never bothers to learn something about it,
is the one that can
never keep it running.
So, you are not trapped in "windoze" unless you chose to not take some time
to learn
the things that will let you make the machine dance to your tunes.
The level of knowledge needed is directly dependant on the requirements you
have for the
system.
Most folks will help resolve problems, if you are specific about the problem
and present
details.
Linux is not all that monsterous, but does require some learning (It's not
DOS).
Feel free to email me directly, if I might be able to assist you.
Neal
========================================
Paul O Bartlett wrote:
> On Sat, 8 Jul 2000, Robert W Moss wrote (small excerpt):
>
> > If noone asks for help, and noone offers any, we will never have much
> > traffic and many people will get disgusted and think DOS is dinosaur,
> > lost in time and they will go on to ngu-linux or fall back to (expletive
> > deleted)
> > gates-windows. When all the knowledge is owned by a few, the many are
> > deprived and wander aimlessly in search of who knows what.
>
> I suppose I am one of the many who are deprived and wandering
> aimlessly. :-) I have posted a time or two, but mostly I have tried
> to read quietly
>
> As I have posted briefly before, I really don't like Windoozy and
> rather liked MS-DOS (I used v5) within its limitations, so I wanted to
> try to learn more about some other DOS(es) that I might like. I have
> toyed with the notion of Linux, but I really don't have any unix
> administration experience, and the task seems a bit daunting.
> (However, I an *using* a dialed-up Linux shell account right now as
> my mail agent.)
>
> Unfortunately, as I have followed this newsgroup for a time, I have
> gotten the idea, rightly or wrongly, that to use some of the other
> DOSes (DR-DOS seems to be the most common), one almost has to be a
> hacker in the good sense. I have a P2/450MHz box with 128MB RAM and a
> 10GB hard drive which is currently only 715MB used, and W98 came
> pre-installed. But I am not a hacker, and it would be only with great
> trepidation that I would even try to install a DOS on this box without
> wiping out what I already have. (About the only thing I really use W98
> _as_such_ for are Netscape and a bit of simple word processing, but I
> do have things installed I would like to keep, such as a lot of DOS
> files. Being able to run either OS would be a real boon.)
>
> On this list I read of boot sectors, dual booting, FAT32 versus
> FAT16, file systems, who or what can or cannot read what or whom, and
> various and assorted other arcana. All of this means little to me. It
> seems for someone like me, who wants to *use* a computer as a tool and
> not as an end in itself, and who does not have a lot of skill and
> background, that mucking about with various operating systems and
> whatnot simply seems to be a task beyond me, much as I dislike Windoozy
> and did like MS-DOS 5 up to its limitations. I don't have anybody to
> come in to hold my hand, so to speak.
>
> Figurativly speaking, is there any hope for a klutz like me, or am
> I trapped in Windowdom?
>
> Thanks for listening.
>
> --
> Regards,
> Paul mailto:bartlett AT smart DOT net
> ..........................................................
> Paul O. Bartlett, P.O. Box 857, Vienna, VA 22183-0857, USA
> Keyserver (0xF383C8F9) or WWW for PGP public key
> Home Page: http://www.smart.net/~bartlett
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