Re: Creating a task launcher.....
On Thu, 7 Jul 2005 21:15:33 +0200
Brice Méalier <mealier_brice@yahoo.fr> wrote:
> generally, the name of the program matches the name of the binary! the
> best example is what you are telling above with firefox...
But what if you don't know the binary? Even on Debian, one could have
none, or several, web browsers installed. I more frequently than not
invoke a given application from a command line but a new user may be
uncomfortable with that. If he's running X, for instance, his only
adjustment (from Windows) might be that he needs to type "program &"
rather than just "program" if he doesn't want his shell hanging on him.
However, other than perhaps firefox or mozilla (and opera, of course),
there's no real association between a program's name on Windows vs. a
similar-functioning app on Linux. For instance, how does a newbie come
to the conclusion that "kopete" is (one choice for) an instant
messaging client? If he's using KDE, he can surmise that, because Menu-
>Internet lists it and tells the user that it's an instant messaging client.
To put this in perspective, I was a new user of a Mac OSX system a few
weeks ago. Took me sometime to figure out that "Safari" was their web
browser. The fact that I could open a terminal and have a reasonably
similar (i.e., Unix environment) is certainly useful, but it didn't
provide any additional help; if I could have done "safari &" I would
have done so, but that's beside the point, as I still had to discover
the association that "safari" is "web browser".
> also I think that new users do not have to use intensively the command
> line but they should be aware that this command line is a way far from
It goes without saying that you can do a whole lot more in it compared
to the Windows command.com environment.
> Brice Méalier
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