Hi,
I just had to comment on one thing.

On Jun 11, 2004, at 2:40 PM, Tyler Zesiger wrote:

>>> The
>>> hardcore hackers don't need to lose anything if Timmy The Five Year 
>>> Old
>>> has an overlying interface to Unix that makes sense to him, so why 
>>> the
>>> incredible opposition to user-friendliness?
>> There are distributions of Linux that aim for this sort of thing. 
>> Maybe you
>> should google for it or check it out....http://www.linuxiso.org
>
> I know about those. They're the exceptions to the rule. I'm 
> complaining about the rules, not the exceptions.

Hrm. The reason I have to use the command line at times is because the 
GUI was created to be "User Friendly". If we attempted to make *all* 
unix command lines accessible to children and other inexperienced 
people, it would suck the power right out of it, just like the gui. I 
figure that GUIs are for user-friendliness, and command lines are for 
raw power. I don't resent the difficult time I had learning how to use 
the command line; I figure it's the price I paid to be able to use that 
power. If you aren't willing to learn it, you don't get to use it.

I still say a small tool (named 'help') would be a good idea, but I 
don't see it as being a full fledged tutorial, just a set of quick 
pointers. I know that one of the first things I typed when I sat down 
to figure out this "Terminal" thing was 'help'. If that had pointed me 
to 'apropos' and 'man', I would have gotten started a lot sooner. 
Instead, a friend did it, and I learned it after all.

If you want a super user-friendly command line, install it. But don't 
make me use it, I won't touch it. It's user friendly enough for me.

cheers,
Mark