Re: Fwd: md5sum using Cygwin in Windows

["Andrew Louie" <louiea at gmail dot com>]

On Fri, Jun 27, 2008 at 11:30 AM, Zheng Li  wrote:
> Well, if you use linux system in a MS windows style where clicking buttons
> can almost solve everything,
> then you may waste of your valuable times and totally loss your confidence
> on Linux.  You need to
> read a book and just learn it, like what you do in other computer lessons.
>  Linux expects you as a master
> and this assumption may be harmful to newbies. Fortunately, after a shape
> learning line, you can control
> your linux system to do lots of things windows can't do.
> Yours
> Zheng

*note: this isn't a specifc reply to you Zheng, just a comment in
general posted to cygwin-talk.

Linux dosn't expect you to do anything. Linux is simply a mismash of
"programming shortcuts" that programmers have developed over the years
so they don't have to reinvent the wheel every single time they want
to make a tool that makes a task easier on the computer. This mismash
is standardized into a single system that is well documented and is
unlike windows becuase Linux was written by programmers for
programmers. With this system, the wheel never has be reinvented,
unless a better wheel is invented. In this way, Linux can only move
forward, it's also why some packages can have a million dependencies,
much to the frustration of the newbie and casual user.

The approach to learning Linux should not be "just install this thing
and play with it" You'll not learn anything useful and just be
frustrated. Instead you should have a clearly defined task, and figure
out the fastest way to do i: "Man, I want to [this complex series of
tasks] but I don't want to have to click on 10 different buttons for
each task, How can I have the computer do this for me based on some
rules that I have?"

Only then will you begin to appreciate the Linux architecture.

Cygwin is a godsend for those of us who are forced to use windows due
to circumstances beyond our control.