Re: "NB Scholars Workstation "

["Shawn Harrison" SAH@xxxxxxxx]

Harry Binswanger said:
.....
Re the problems in installing linux--my wife knows Unix, would that make it
a breeze, or only easier?
.....

Only easier.

Actually, if you get a good distribution (Debian, Red Hat, Caldera, or SuSE), installation won't
really be that big a deal. *Customization* is where things get hairy. Things also get hairy when you
want to upgrade. Part of the issue is that many of the packages available for Linux still assumes
that you're an experience Unix programmer wanting to set up a Unix box at home, rather than a
disenchanted DOS/Windows/Mac user looking for an alternative. The Linux Documentation Project
(www.ldp.org) is trying to fill that gap, but there's still a long way to go.

For those who are interested in Linux, the most powerful+easy-to-use Linux-native editing program is
(in my opinion) a program called NEdit (stands for "Nirvana Editor"). It was developed at
Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, who no longer supports it. BUT the original programmer is
still actively supporting and developing it, along with a band of programmers who use it. NEdit is
an X program (X is the Unix version of Windows). It isn't a word processor ― you don't get
WYSIWYG formatting. But it has outstanding syntax highlighting and auto-indent functions for various
markup languages, such as LaTeX and HTML. The current release can be downloaded for free, and the
next release (coming out in a month or two) will be under the GPL (General Public License). See
www.nedit.org for details.

There are "word processors" available for Linux, but most of them are either alpha/beta
software and don't really work properly yet, or they're bloatware (such as StarOffice ― as
beastly as anything you can imagine from Corel or Microsoft; and don't forget WordPerfect, which
Corel has made available, so you can download it for free from Corel's website for personal use on
your Linux machine! No thanks.). And none of them are very satisfactory in terms of a macro language
and keyboard/environment customization.

If you run XyWrite under Linux using dosemu, you'll have to be aware of the basic differences
that'll impact you. For instance, Linux supports long filenames, and the filenames are case
sensitive. Also, Linux uses "linefeed" for the end of a paragraph, while DOS and Windows
use "carriage return + linefeed" (and the Mac uses a "carriage return") ―
you'll want to have XyWWWeb handy to do those conversions.


S.H.
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sah@xxxxxxxx
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