Date: Mon, 5 Aug 2002 17:04:19 +0930 From: Greg 'groggy' Lehey <grog@lemis.com> To: Jud <jud@myrealbox.com> Cc: Hostmaster@Video2Video.Com, mwvw@adelphia.net, FreeBSD-Questions@FreeBSD.Org Subject: Re: What do we need in a FreeBSD desktop? (was: Peter heads back to M$FT WinBloze [support groups]) Message-ID: <20020805073418.GB83171@wantadilla.lemis.com> In-Reply-To: <20020729215629.435b4356.jud@myrealbox.com> References: <00d301c23504$9bbe0c60$0a01a8c0@mswolf> <20020726210341.N20468-100000@earl-grey.cloud9.net> <20020728023016.GA51076@wantadilla.lemis.com> <20020729215629.435b4356.jud@myrealbox.com>
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On Monday, 29 July 2002 at 21:56:29 -0400, Jud wrote: > > One of the instant-workstation ports I have not tried is mutt, > though I've read much praise for it and no negatives that I can > recall. I wonder, though, whether a gui mail application might be a > good choice for this "target market," in addition to, instead of, or > as another choice besides mutt. Sylpheed happens to be the one I > prefer, and it seems to be well liked by many other users. Speaking > as someone who didn't know a thing about Unix a couple of years ago > (and hasn't improved on the situation all that much since:), it was > very easy to learn. Valid point. I've added sylpheed. > Another place where options might be appreciated is browsers - > perhaps Galeon, Opera, Mozilla? See my article at http://ezine.daemonnews.org/200208/ports.html. At the moment I think it's a bit early to install more than one browser. They all carry significant ballast with them. > And Lynx I think is excellent for getting around on the Net at times > when one doesn't want to or can't be in X. I don't think the target audience would find themselves in that situation. > Perhaps that's taken care of by w3m (I don't remember ATM whether > that's part of the default emacs install)? That brings me to my > last and likely most controversial thought. Emacs does everything > but bake blueberry muffins, but it might be more intimidating (or > puzzling - took me awhile just to understand what "M-x" > meant) than useful to someone fairly new to Unix. It does take a > while to build and install (and download, for those of us on > dial-ups). And the configuration options! - not exactly > 'instant.' If it's part of the install, it seems to me users will > try it, and may wind up thinking "Jeez, this stuff is hard" as a > first impression of FreeBSD. As I mentioned earlier, I've done a number of experiments. Emacs has the great advantage in this context that all simple commands are available via a menu interface. People *can* use it with no prior knowledge. Greg -- Finger grog@lemis.com for PGP public key See complete headers for address and phone numbers To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
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