[sf-lug] Consumer & admin (was: Possibly interesting data point on jobs postings)

[Rick Moen]

Quoting jim stockford (jim at well.com):

>     Best I can tell (being more expert than I let on, and
> therefore fairly blind), Linux and Windows
> management is pretty much the same--you know
> basic concepts, the GUI is there for you in either
> case, no command-line need apply.

Except that the Linux version _really works_.  And you don't have to
choose between staying current (with the latest service pack breaking a
bunch of your applications) or deliberately hanging back and taking
fearsome security risks.  Windows updating is a bad joke compared to its
parallels in typical Linux distributions.


Not personally having command-line phobia, my Debian updating regime
every few weeks goes like this:

$ su -     (i.e., become the root user)
# apt-get update && apt-get dist-upgrade
# exit
$

Of course, since this is bash (and thus has filename completion), I
don't actually even type some parts of the second line:  I just hit Tab
quite a bit, and it types out for me.

If I got tired of doing that, I could probably make a little GUI widget
labelled "DWIM" (Do What I Mean) or something, that does it for me -- 
but I really can't be bothered.  Or I could use one of the myriad of
graphical front-end tools to apt -- synaptic, aptitude, adept, whatever.

I'm sure that the main desktop-oriented distributions have the
equivalent functionality GUIfied and made really prominent and easy to
use:  Synaptic in Ubuntu and MEPIS, Adept in Kubuntu, YaST in SUSE
Linux, Xandros Update in Xandros Desktop OS, urpmi in MandrivaLinux, 
etc.

Even on Debian I really _should_ use sudo instead of su'ing to root --
as with Ubuntu's default setup.  With sudo (e.g., in Ubuntu/Kubuntu), it
would be just one line:

$ sudo apt-get update && apt-get dist-upgrade

To repeat, the challenge is finding a (desktop) Linux that does _not_
leave the MS-Windows experience utterly in the dust, in this area.