Date: Tue, 1 May 2001 05:35:43 +1000 From: Sue Blake <sue@welearn.com.au> To: Doug Russell <drussell@saturn-tech.com> Cc: "Arthur W. Neilson III" <art@pilikia.net>, freebsd-stable@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: tail Message-ID: <20010501053543.B3528@phoenix.welearn.com.au> In-Reply-To: <Pine.BSF.4.21.0105010313460.78446-100000@beastie.saturn-tech.com>; from drussell@saturn-tech.com on Tue, May 01, 2001 at 03:23:15AM -0600 References: <200104300841220210.0C7DBEE8@smtp> <Pine.BSF.4.21.0105010313460.78446-100000@beastie.saturn-tech.com>
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On Tue, May 01, 2001 at 03:23:15AM -0600, Doug Russell wrote:
>
> You could then put your machine in "user friendly" mode if desired, but
> those of us who expect Unix to behave like Unix can set it to mode
> 0. There could be levels in between without the "Are you sure you are
> really sure you answered the last are you sure question correctly?", but
> not quite totally bare.....
As you indicate, it is important to be free to make one's own choices.
Here's one example of where the standard behaviour is used. At work we
have various flavours of commercial unix, and a few diverse Linux
boxes. No BSD to speak of. I need to teach very basic unix skills to
the operators and give them some place to practise.
For this I have chosen FreeBSD on a dedicated training crash box.
FreeBSD serves as the generic BSD model, with nothing else mixed in,
and the differences found on some of the other machines make good
examples of SysV to compare. That gives them two basic unix styles to
learn about, rather than several. For the most part FreeBSD tools
behave like the tools on any other unix, and that is important,
pitfalls and all.
One of the most important things to learn in our environment is
where the hidden dangers are. You can destroy a server with something
as apparently innocent as cat, so our rule is always run file before
cat. They must see that the behaviour happens the same way as on the
majority of other systems, if they are to be able to tranfer the
learning and see the validity in the general work rules. We also get
a lot of value out of studying the outcomes of accidents during
learning, e.g. what happens when you cat the wrong thing on
one of those old terminals.
People who are already novices on several other systems don't have
any trouble doing basic stuff on FreeBSD, because it does what they
expect, no big surprises. That is important in today's heterogeneous
unix environments.
If someone wanted a unix system to be easy to use as an internal
desktop machine and didn't ever plan to use any other system,
I might recommend RedHat because it employs a lot of startling
(to us) changes to make things seem "easier", and has a certain
confidence building feel at first. But I've never met such a person.
--
Regards,
-*Sue*-
--
Regards,
-*Sue*-
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