FC4->FC5 upgrade options -- and GUIs
Anne Wilson
cannewilson at tiscali.co.uk
Sat Mar 11 17:55:02 UTC 2006
On Saturday 11 March 2006 17:24, Craig White wrote:
> cli = command line interface
>
> recognize that the fundamental architecture of UNIX/Linux is 'C'
> language and text configuration files. Knowing where the configuration
> files are located and how to use an appropriate text editor is the key.
>
> GUI = graphic user interface
>
> recognize that the GUI tools that are available merely manipulate the
> same text configuration files in the same locations...they just provide
> the knowledge of where these files are and the GUI editor to edit them.
>
I think your judgement on this has been a little harsh. I would rather say
that 20-30% of users are not confident of their ability to survive without
the GUI. I still prefer to edit in kwrite myself, but I'm quite able to
manage the few basic commands to get by in vi if I have to.
I do speak from experience, though. When I arrived here from Mandriva a few
weeks ago I was frankly a little nervous at losing my safety-net. I knew I
would probably need to use the CLI more than I had done previously. To my
amazement I found that, brain-farts apart, I did know most of what I needed,
other than the slight differences in the way things are done between distros.
> If you can function in command line, you can probably boot into single
> user mode and fix about anything. If you require the GUI, then you have
> to be able to boot into GUI mode to fix something. That issue was on
> FC-4 as one of the updates updated some xorg stuff that broke run level
> 5 (GUI) on many people's hardware and they had to actually get to
> command line as root (probably run level 3) and run
> 'system-config-display --reconfig' to fix things.
>
Hmm - I suffered a complete loss of X a couple of years ago through a broken
mirror. It wasn't funny. And it couldn't be fixed by a tool such as
system-config-display. The biggest problem, in that case, is losing the
life-line of list support. Up to then I had never heard of the text
browsers, but I've made sure that I could manage if I ever had to again, so
at least I'd be able to use webmail to interface.
FWIW, I'm in favour of clean install, from my past experience, but I have
never yet managed to do two clean installs with identical results, even
ignoring the obvious hardware-related differences ;-)
Anne
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