Discussion on:

10 reasons why your kids should be using Linux

Because I hate my kids.

I kid, I kid!

Had to do it, Jack!

Scott

borderline abuse.

No Reader Rabbit, Toon Town, Roller Coaster Tycoon, USB microscope, Math Blaster, etc.

I sat them in front of my Linux box once, they responded with "Dad, fix it. It is all messed up and won't run anything."

lol

I hope this was tongue-in-cheek and your kids are not this inept...

My kids have a Wii / ps2 /xbox360, they look for the appropriate logo on the game box and insert and play it. They also have several hand held systems, and know the differences between the variety of cartridges associated with each individual one and don't have a problem with getting the game started without incident.

So when they use our PC / Mac / Linux systems they know what to do, look for the games folder or menu item and are able to select and play them without a problem. Even when I changed one of my low-resource linux desktops to a lightweight window manager, my 5yo son asked "where's the menu" (was too cute) he didn't think to click on the background, and once I showed him he found the "games" sub-menu and went on his merry way.

It could be, you are very restrictive of what you want your kids to know / learn, or of what brand / type of games (my wife has accused me of being quite liberal lol) that is your choice.

cheers

Should have stopped with 5.

Numbers 5, 7, 8, 9, and 10 are a mix of a big stretch, and something that could be done on any OS.

Hey, Jody! How about changing the blog title to '5 Things (and More)'? Then authors wouldn't have to list questionable duplicates in order to reach an arbitrary number.

That said, I think Jack's overall message is a good one.

And the idea that kids want to delve into computer science while using a PC is intertwined throughout. I really don't think that compares well with reality.
Kids are like adults in this way and the majority have interests outside of computer science and use the computer for it's applications. I think Linux is still not on top in terms of available software, other than it being free. Personally, I am a capitalist and make money from my software. I share lots of code with peers and elsewhere but I reserve the right to copyright my software and make it proprietary as well without people gettning political, many times idelogical on me.
That is just crazy. Nobody wants to here others trying to push a way of life down their throats as I've found on many sites is exactly the case with a large number of open source advocates. I'm not trying to start something here and am saying this very matter of factly.

Windows 7 is really the fave of my Son, super easy and fun to use and Homegroups make is so super easy to share data and it has real honest to goodness parental controls that really work extremely well. The stability of windows 7 is astonishing compared to XP and even 2001 vintage Linux and Mac OS for that matter, considering that is what 85% of the world users, 2001 technology.
Sure today's linux is better, but not better than today's windows.

And no security problems with Linux? My Son loves to play on his Wii and enjoys Mario Karts especially. Well, since the Wii's it's built on a Linux OS, the wii world is hacked to pieces. He can't play on-line without facing gobs of hacks and cheaters every single time he goes on WFC. It's like a corrupt and dirty world that kids are being exposed to....Nintendo needs to tighten down allowable names, but I'm sure there is a way around that as well.
But to continue to hear the security thing, as though nearly pre internet technology should be hack proof is growing desperately old. Its' simply not worth rehashing repeatedly. Windows 7 runs great on minimal hardware and has a start version that will run on anything Ubuntu will run on....as a matter of fact, the full install of Ubuntu with all of the goodies that Windows has always included, requires more machine than you need for XP.

And this idea that "entire countries" are adopting Linux is also very misleading. There are some portions of some government entities switching to Linux but that is a very miniscule number of users compared to the country's population.
Unless the author is referring to communist countries or dictatorships where the people do not have free will to get the OS of their choice. I hardly think that is the "future" for our kids.
One only need look at the netbook sales by OS to see that not even in the 2nd and 3rd world countries has Linux taken a true foothold.

Well, my 5yr old and my 3yr old boys, both delight themselves in this marvelous package.
It is free, has some amazing tools for developing kids skills, like: spelling, reading, painting, solving puzzles, drawing,the list is endless.

check it out and I am sure many kids,parents,even schools would love it.
Long life to EDUBUNTU.

But the web, let alone software titles, is chock full of educational software that is excellent. It's not a matter of OS in that case.
I still think kids are better off running the OS enviornment used by 90% of the world on the desktop. Just my opinion.

Do you own Microsoft stock?

Jack isn't pushing "a way of life down their throats."

If you'll notice, he did say at the beginning
"In the end, you can decide for yourself whether they?re reason enough to migrate those young users away from other operating systems."

I guess i got off on a tangent when I was speaking about the open source community's behavior on certain sites, actually many sites, and the fact it's very ideological and completely void of positive dialouge about choice.
Try zdnet (a sister property of this site I believe) or slashdot for a taste of what I'm talking about.

I didn't mean to go on such a tangent there, sorry...but it's quite true that the "ABM" crowd does try to push an agenda down everyone's throat and unfortunately, in my opinion, it's hurt the acceptance of Linux. Most non tech types are completely turned off by radical behavior and it leaves a bad taste in their mouth about Linux. There are thousands, if not millions of "ABM" types on the web and they are shooting there own cause in the foot.
Even Linus Torvalds has said that type is the last thing the linux world needs and he is against using Linux for religious warfare against proprietary software. And afterall, most Linux distros have a deal of proprietary software anyway.

I'm not a Windows only person and use various systems for various jobs.
I would always use a Linux server and Apache for an internet facing web server.
Internally i use iis 7 and windows server 2008.
File servers - Linux
App servers - Windows.

Clients, Windows 7.

>"since the Wii's it's built on a Linux OS, the wii world is hacked to pieces. He can't play on-line without facing gobs of hacks and cheaters every single time he goes on WFC."

I have seen similar symptoms with network congestion / delay which may appear to be other players cheating, easy to confuse.

Remember IRC netsplits?

IMHO linux is a good alternative - not a replacement - to windows. As far as my kids are concerned, I can install linux on a former windows PC and it's "brand new" lol. They don't have a problem clicking on the menu and finding the game launchers at all, and with the new software center in ubuntu 10.04 it's all the easier for them to install them too.

To anyone who says {linux | windows} is better", I will correct them and say "it's different".

cheers

I appreciate you attempting to explain what we are experiencing, but if you know the game at all, you'll realize that racers in first place cannot get a "star" item, let alone repeatedly and win by so far very good racers can't even complete the last lap before the game shuts down.
I'm not sure why I'm bothering but we see hyperspacing, racers who have speed equivilent to that of someone with a cloud, at all times and even the fastest bike/cart cannot come close to catching them on a simple oval track getting boosts the entire time. My son, and myself are 3 star level players.
We see those who change their scores to values above 9999, which they have to reset after each race (those types win by a lap, but don't cross teh finish line and allow everyone to gain huge amounts of points they didn't earn) then there are those item box hackers that get nothing but red shells and trap people in the middle to the back of the pack shooting endless red shells so they are immobile. I'm pretty sure after the 10th red shell from the same person, whom you try to back up to get behind, and who backs up too as you try, hitting you 3 times for every minimal distance you make in between is also lag.
There is tons of documentation online about hacking the wii.
Sometimes at the start line, before the count gets down to 1 before GO, a hack will fire off several blue spiney shells to wreak havoc at the start line. Again, I don't believe this is lag.
They will also send a trio of blue shells after anyone in first place around 20 times in a 3 lap race. Again, I don't believe that is lag.
And finally, when playing WFC, and first coming on-line, you get a chance, while you are waiting to join the racers you are picked to compete with, to see a certain amount of their current race live. You can switch between racers to see how they are doing etc.
We've witnessed hacks of all kinds while watching this, people firing red shells continuously at an unsuspecting player to people running with "star" power the entire time. Truely, this does not seem to be lag.

I've written Nintendo and they've apologized and their only recommendation is to only play with "friends" and not regional or Worldwide. They have tried to remove cheats and hacks but they get directly back on. They come right out and admit they can't do Anything about the LINUX hacking on the nintendo Wii.
They didn't say anything about "lag".

I doubt it is the fault of linux, I personally ran dedicated game servers way back when (on linux, for windows based games) and yes there were problems with cheaters. Ban their IP address (or their entire subnet) for a day, week, month - the problem eventually goes away.

There is a responsibility of the admins / ops for all internet based services, right? Apparently they are not doing their job.

And I doubt it's limited to the Wii or linux-based games, I was hosting for a windows game and problems are also rampant for xbox live - difference being, they will kick and ban you for good. An excellent deterrent (as I have found out through experience).

I guess you can blame linux all you like, we "got the facts" now lol

Very impressive

People might actually pay attention when it had a virus
http://www.bestspywareremovalblog.com/20486/linux-irc-server-gets-trojan-press-harps-on-linux-security/

Your kids will do nothing but get on the Internet since there are few games for it.

They could have two unstable releases of an OS instead of one (Vista vs. Fedora 11 and 12)

Don't get me wrong Linux is good for a lot of reasons but so are Windows 7 and MAC OSX. If you really want to help your kids.

At 12 years of age, kids should be playing outside, learning how to interact with others in person, no wasting time and childhood on a computer. I was pretty much completely computer illiterate until I was 15, my sisters would open Wheel Of Fortune for me in DOS because I had no clue how. Then after I deleted the OS after starting a computer applications class I dived into programming through Basic (that's what the PC XT would boot into with no OS) and within a couple of months was getting into assembler and writing binary machine code snippets in QBasic.

Kids don't need to waste their childhood on the computer to become computer literate adults.

Learning from a young age tends to result in a much better understanding of the topic. But, everything in moderation including computer time and time outside.

"Learning from a young age tends to result in a much better understanding of the topic"

I find this interesting, what are your sources for this information, or is it only anecdotal?

And this blog presumes all kids will be computer scientists or have a need to understand something lower level than an application, such as the OS itself.

I don't have any source to quote, but I would bet the number of kids who are interested in learning the OS would make that reasoning fall completely apart.

My 6, soon to be 7, year old has demonstrated no interest in figuring out what makes the OS tick, but rather learning from great apps. They can be found for any OS but the most well supported and rated of those are for the Mac and PC hands down.

I work in IT and use tools like Filezilla, MagicDisc, Firefox and other open source apps constantly but many, take filezilla for example, still have UIs that remind me of the 90s, but then I'm sure kids would want to understand the ftp commands scrolling by and next thing you know, they aer writing their own ftp server...not.

Windows 7 is really the fave of my Son, super easy and fun to use and Homegroups make is so super easy to share data and it has real honest to goodness parental controls that really work extremely well. The stability of windows 7 is astonishing compared to XP and even 2001 vintage Linux and Mac OS for that matter, considering that is what 85% of the world users, 2001 technology.
Sure today's linux is better, but not better than today's windows.

And no security problems with Linux? My Son plays Mario Karts on Wii and since it's built on a Linux OS, the wii world is hacked to pieces. He can't play on-line without facing gobs of hacks and cheaters every single time he goes on WFC. It's like a corrupt and dirty world that kids are being exposed to....Nintendo needs to tighten down allowable names, but I'm sure there is a way around that as well.

It's a good chance that a higher percentage of the readers are from a technology background resulting in children with access to technology even if they don't grow up to be in the field themselves. I don't think it suggests that kids are going to have to grow up and understand anything below the UI and application layer. One of the points says kids *can* explore OSS based platforms more deeply but not that they *must* do so.

Regarding filezilla, you can always choose something with a more preferable interface. There are also benefits to seeing the commands and results. Sure, it's not going to automatically result in them growing up to write an FTP server or client but it's far less frustration than some criptic error message and no further indication of what's happening.

"sure today's linux is better, but not better than today's windows"

That depends on the task. I like win7 also but it doesn't replace what I do with non-windows platforms.

"And no security problems with Linux? My Son plays Mario Karts on Wii and since it's built on a Linux OS, the wii world is hacked to pieces."

You can't blame all distributions that happen to use the Linux kernel for the failings of Nintendo's custom Linux based distribution or it's management of it's servers. We'd need to know exactly how wii world was broken into. Was it configuration issues, mismanagement in general, vulnerabilities in the binaries?

"no security problems" is a stretch as all software has security issues. Shall we compare numbers of successful exploitations and turn around times for patching those upon discovery?

But.. your original question was about children learning things from a young age. Having kids of your own, you haven't noticed that there brains are sponges for learning? Sure, the focus is lacking but the ability to learn is well into high gear even prior to birth. With age, we loose the ability to learn new concepts to such a depth. An introduction to languages may not result in the child speaking them but it will result in learning them far quicker should they choose at a later age. Music and other topics are no different. A kid that starts riding a bike at age three is probably going to be far better than a kid that starts riding at age twelve. Sure, not 100% true for every child but true for children in general.

In the end, I still opt for a multi-OS household. Why limit the child by exposing them to only one?

As a parent and somebody with a (limited) education background I agree. I see kids as a blank slate. They are preloaded with a desire to learn. They do this through a certain amount of copying and a certain amount of discovery. Children learn a large proportion of their skills and their personalities from copying their parents, and through their peer groups the prejudices and behaviour of other childrens parents. This is observable and can very probably be measured if adults would put aside the "father knows best" nonsense and somebody was to do a truly objective study. 2 notable areas are (off topic slightly but in the interests of a discussion) racism and religion. Young children have no care that a child with a different coloured skin is in any way inherently different or in any way inferior. They get this form of prejudice from their parents and from what they hear coming from the mouths of other children who have got those ideas from their parents and families. Religion is another place where it is indoctrinated by parents from a young age the idea "we are superior to xxxx because only we know what is right, everybody who believes something different is wrong and therefore inferior"
Then I see how good microsoft have been in forcing their agenda into schools. I see all the time young people straight from college with "IT" qualifications which in reality mean nothing more than "Knowledge of some microsoft applications and which gui buttons to click" As this is all they have ever been exposed to in the home also due to the forced retailing of only microsoft software running hardware and by the almost universal encouragement towards playing games instead of doing stuff (hahaha) they are pretty much useless to anybody who may employ them for anything other than clicking those same buttons. This is a deliberate policy adopted by microsoft (and to a similar extent apple) to create a world populated only by users of their proprietary software (like religion again.. squeeze out the different with prejudice.. how microsoft/apple apologists and trolls are there pushing a similar agenda?) to ensure a totally proprietary and controlled future.
The losers in this scenario are our children. They are deprived of a valuable opportunity to see that there IS another way to achieve their ends. How many open source using parents have been pressured by schools who get a microsoft kickback, through their children, to run a computer with said proprietary software installed so the kids can "complete their school assignments"? It is exactly the same idea as saying "your child cannot come to this school unless you accept forced indoctrination in a certain religion and will studiously apply it yourself, even if you do not believe it, in every aspect of your daily home life as well" ..
As adults our role should not be one of "teaching" but should be one of open guidance and allowing natural development with choices, only correcting when something is clearly learned from others which is unacceptable. In that way we empower our children with real decision making and choice taking skills, and as a by-product a love for learning and an interest in discovery as a process and not a chore to be completed to tick our false boxes. Our goal should be to produce well rounded and inquiring young adult minds empowered with useful skills, not clones of ourselves with all our prejudices and misguided achievement targets.

PPW .. product of a very liberal and open childhood learning experience.

I'm not going to enter a security debate because there is far too much at play to make comparisons, analyze data and make any real conclusive comments on the matter. That's my opinion anyway. It would require so many variables, from the original goal of the MS/Clone partnerships to the rise of the internet to comparing today's offerings, and then retroactively comparing the state of linux in the early 90s, functionality vs. security and on and on. Luckily this seems to be a far cry from zdnet.com and others where most have decided Windows is useless in any form, version etc. and that open source is the only ethical way for computer manufacturers and software vendors to go.

I have an only child and he is definately a sponge. He has been tested and selected for the gifted program starting in second grade this coming year. I'm not sure his mind is concerned with the platform level and like most people is only interested in finding applications he finds useful. That's it, there is no more to for him in terms of technology. Maybe later in life he'll want to dig deeper, but I think for most mortals you could present even a closed source system and they would find a full career in just understanding and learning the minutiae of the system, it's apps, programming environments, all of it's programming APIs, frameworks and foundations to the level of being a master of it all. Few people, for example could be a master SQL admin, programmer, framework programmer and be able to apply it all to dozens of server and client systems and applications.

I'm not sold on early learning. While I tend to think it helps, there is also the idea of genetics and capacity of any given individual.

You could put off many things a child is usually taught early to an older age and they will still be entirely proficient when they do learn and I'm not sure this doesn't extend into this example of technology and early exposure. I think any child born with the talent will not lag behind other children who started earlier for their lifetime. I'm not sure there is evidence of that in any case.
I used to play baseball at a semi professional level, so to speak. It was a league of 19 years and up made up of many players who'd been in single and double AA ball but either decided they would not go further or didn't really love it as much as they thought as a career so they played in this league. I have known many players that never played ball until 18 and turned out being superior to many. I think learning is like that and can be compared to the skills of a sport.

I think Filezilla's interface is a breeze. You need to know very nothing about FTP other than a site, login and password.

Perhaps it needs gigantic buttons with sentence long descriptions that take up most of your screen to explain the meaning of "Connect".

The pop-up balloon that says "If you wish to connect to an FTP server, cnter a valid user name, password, and ftp server address, then click this button."

This last school year, my youngest grandson wanted me and his mom to come to his class for their book reports. I video taped two hours of 8-9 year olds giving book reports using POWERPOINT. He's nearly to the point of being rightfully called an expert. They also use Word and Excel. He has a good Windows computer, soon, he'll have an Apple laptop. Then whatever is used in his classroom, he'll be familiar with it. (Last year they had XP-Pro; this year was apple.)

I like the idea - I really do. But can you imagine the compaints that their machine can't do what their friend's machine does? Or how, at school, we did such-and-such. In today's society, it wouldn't surprise me if parents got had up for child abuse if we enforced Linux onto them!

Oh.. happy days.

"Daddy, why am I using Ubuntu instead of Windows?"

"Because Windows costs too much."

"How much is too much, Daddy?"

"I had to choose between buying Windows or feeding you. Should I have bought Windows?"

It's a well known fact that if parents want content filtering on their (windows) machine, they ask their kids to install it because they have no clue how.

I can't see why that would any different with any other platform, the average kid will always be more proficient than the average adult.

Let alone "For any sudo-based operating system, you will need to edit the /etc/sudoers file to give your young users the privileges they need" ... try explaining that to your average parent.

Oh, and don't forget you'll probably have to buy cedega too, which, after two or three years, costs probably about as much as an OEM Windows installation.

For the readers of this site installing something along the lines of Untangle to filter and protect the whole network isn't out of line nor a difficult task. My network is filtered and my kids know it because I showed them and explained what it does.

I have been running it for over a year and had no problems.

Now if we can only get the latest and greatest game to load onto Tux we will have all those little people converted from a small age

Some of these are decent. A lot of them make no sense. I am not saying that Windows is necessarily better per se. But seriously, Linux is hardly a panacea for the world's woes, and the last thing I need is to inflict Linux on my child, unless it is Android (kids "get" phones and they "just work" for the most part).

#4: Age-specific tools: Linux still hasn't made itself usable for *adults*. Do you really think they've figured out how to make something usable for a *child*?

#6: You obviously do not have children. Yes, children are naturally curious and are quick learners. At the same time, when my kid wants to watch something online, just like an adult he doesn't want to be frustrated because the content is encoded with a codec that the distro folks dislike due to the patent scenario... he wants to just watch the video!

#7: Over 1 billion people on the planet speak Chinese. More than a billion speak Hindu or its close sibling Urdu. Yet, despite the increased adoption of non-English languages around the world, we still speak English in my household. For some reason, unless my kid is planning to move to Asia when he grows up, I think I am doing him a favor.

#8: Virtually no one (as a percentage of users) look at the Linux source. I don't think age makes a difference. In case you haven't noticed, it's mostly C and C++. Highly trained adults have a hard time reading and writing C/C++, let along kids with zero knowledge or experience.

#9: Ah, so you want to teach my child to tell me to "RTFM" when I ask him if he did his homework? Or if I tell him that the lawn mower stopped working after he used it, he can tell me, "works for me, you must be the problem"? Because that's what an awful lot of the Linux community is like.

#10: Can be done in Windows, too. Including editing the hosts file (C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc\hosts)

J.Ja

Now come on... It's summer, and stories are weak. So are ideas for them. I haven't stopped laughing since I read this.

Because you're right! Turning your children onto Linux? at age 2 yet?

Light that sucker and puff, puff, pass 'cause I need some of that!!!

And the reality check you gave here? If you weren't an IT Pro, someone might think you were being reasonable.

and knows how to be a Linux user... He's the littlest one, his older brother use computers all the time, and yup, Linux, Their Daddy taught them.
When I was young I helped my father build Ham Radios. (ok, watched for a while, then helped, when I didn't have to stand on a stool) He is now a retired Electronic Design Engineer.
It's a family tradition. It happens.

My little one means Qimo Linux with the children's theme and age appropriate games.

The article should have been entitled: "10 Ways Linux Enthusiasts Imagine Things Work For Ordinary People".

I've been installing Linux on machines my kids use for years, hoping with each release that the day has arrived that I can turn on the machine and say, "Hey kids, look at how fast and cool this new operating system is!" I even have their systems dual-booting right now using the latest LTS versions of Ubuntu and Linux Mint.

But here is the reality of this mis-guided idea that just tossing kids into Linux-land will turn out rosy:

1. Just because kids are young and learn more naturally than adults does not make them good candidates for sink-or-swim experiences with new operating systems. Can you picture me saying, "Oh, you can't print from Ubuntu? Just go online and find a solution then tell me when you need me to enter credentials for an elevated user account so you can make the changes to the config file using vi, okay honey?" Can you picture me hearing, "Okay, Daddy!"? Not. Not even my tech-eager 15-year-old could do this.

2. Kids who have been using a collection of Windows-based tools and programs (yes, my kids play plenty of disc-based games in addition to online OS-agnostic ones - think Roller Coaster Tycoon) will NOT find Linux a breeze. Do you think you'd hear this in our household, "You want to build a roller coaster, sweetie? Okay, just use WINE, put in the disc, and I'm sure you'll be just fine!" Not! If I think my technical support duties in our household are high now with several computers running multiple operating systems (WinXP Home, WinXP Pro, Vista) with a single networked printer is onerous now, it would only be multiplied if I had to figure out how to make that happen with Linux AND retrain my family to use all new keyboard shortcuts, right-click options, and configuration systems, using programs that mostly (inexplicably) start with the letter "K" or "G", depending on the distro.

3. Technology as Life Lesson - I would be happy to introduce my kids to community-based principles, but one step at at time, making sure the impression is POSITIVE. Tossing them into Linux right now? NOT positive. I think doing so would cure them of ever wanting to use an open-source thing again. My strategy: let them use Open Office, Firefox, Freemind, PDF Creator, and a collection of open-source educational tools. I let them know that these are free because people work together to build them rather than form a company and sell the software.

Here's a realistic strategy for computing for kids:
1. Let them use Windows computers that are 3 or so years behind the current cutting edge. They don't need screaming speed, and used computers can be picked up on Craigslist. My kids use older ones that that. Set it up so each family member has his/her own username and make no kids Administrators.

2. Install Microsoft Security Essentials - free to non-pirated Windows users, and darn good security for the money! Set it to do a full scan daily, just to be on the safe side.

3. Install Safe Eyes parental control software ($50/year for 3 computers). You can fine-tune it per-user and it memorizes passwords. You can pick your web filtering categories and rest easy -- it just works! But it doesn't work with Linux. I haven't been able to find a non-guru solution for Linux parental control, no matter what wishful thinking authors say.

4. Install MS Office Home and Student if you can afford it ($150 for 3 computers) -- they will use this at work some day, so why not give them a head start? If you can't afford it, install Open Office 3 and log in with each user to configure the Save settings to ALWAYS convert and save to MS Office formats. Most people freeze up if you email an ODF or similar document.

5. Install Firefox and make it the default browser for all users. Some open source projects really are the best of breed. But also update IE to the latest version because some web sites just don't work right in Firefox.

6. If you have a tech-leaning kid, install Ubuntu in a dual-boot configuration (defaulting to Windows, if you can figure out how to do that, since no distro makes doing so very simple) and let him/her in on "the secret". My bet: your kid will abandon it after a very short foray -- too unfamiliar, no added value.

That is the bottom line: why toss your kids into an unfamiliar environment that adds no real value (other than philosophical OSS stuff) to their lives?

as someone who uses linux on my back-end home network here are some suggestions:

>"1. "4. Install MS Office "That is the bottom line: why toss your kids into an unfamiliar environment that adds no real value (other than philosophical OSS stuff) to their lives? "

Why does it have to be unfamiliar? Kids are really apt these days with so many appliance devices. My son asked me recently about our router and how everything works together - I was so proud despite seeming bored as I explained it all.

It sounds like you are imposing your bad linux experience to your siblings - don't make it so negative Take a step back and see it from a larger perspective. After all, it's just another OS.

cheers

a Java environment isn't GNU/Linux you know.

Google's Android OS for phones is a java environment on top of GNU/Linux, and is completely different than a GNU/Linux system.

... I said "Linux" and not "GNU/Linux". Then again, leaving out the "GNU" part of that combination goes an awfully long way towards usability. Too bad Richard Stallman isn't as... zealous... about usability or consistency (can we at least get some agreement on which switches do what?) as he is about copyright issues.

J.Ja

RMS wrote gnu emacs by himself.
it was after it was a working tool others got involved.

and if you have ever worked with emacs, you know how screwy it's workings are.

a warped mind to have come up with that design.

Yeah, emacs is RMS' big victory. It's so... 1976.

I've tried using emacs. I learned just enough to save and close it. Opening files is CLI only for me. I'm slightly more advanced with vi. I know how to save, save & quit, and delete and entire line. If that was enough for me to write COBOL programs that were a few thousand lines long in high school, it's enough to get me through config file editing today...

J.Ja