finding & installing apps, secure file transfer

[yellowdog-newbie@lists.terrasoftsolutions.com]

Mr. Greenfield:

On Monday, August 25, 2003, at 09:47  PM, glenn greenfield wrote:
> Yellowdog has their own package manager 'yum' of course
> <http://www.yellowdoglinux.com/support/solutions/ydl_general/yum.shtml>
> It's worked well for me although the package selection seemed a bit 
> small. It has yet to cause any dependency issues. There is also 
> apt-get, ported from Debian GNU Linuxd to RPM based distros.
> <http://bazar.conectiva.com.br/~godoy/apt-howto/>

Thanks for the pointers. I sort of knew about yum; I updated my basic 
YDL 3.0 install by typing "yum something-or-other" and it appeared to 
work. I will have to spend more time playing with it. apt-get looks 
nice, too. The major disadvantage of some of these schemes would seem 
to be that one needs to know exactly (letter-perfect) what one wants 
ahead of time. Lazy as I am, I prefer to click on an item in a list.

> cd /usr/sbin
> ls
>
> Everything in the color yellow is an executable script.

Aha! That's useful information! I had already sussed that items in blue 
were directories, but knowing that yellow are scripts/apps eluded me. 
Thanks!

> You can find out what a file is like so:
> file makekdedoc
> makekdedoc: a /usr/bin/perl -I/usr/share/kdoc script text executable

Another useful command. I have a nice Unix reference (several, 
actually), but I cannot look up a command unless I *already* know its 
name -- the eternal Catch-22. For instance, the command "file" is not 
something I would have guessed would give *information* on an 
application (in Macintosh parlance, "files" are items created by 
applications).

> [... Lots more interesting and useful information elided...]
>
> It's great to see Mac users who are accustomed to an easy to use and 
> straightforward interface interested in Linux enough to learn how it 
> works.

That's quite a compliment (as I am certain you meant it). We Mac users 
are seeing the tip of the *nix iceberg in the guise of Mac OS X. Some 
of us, like myself, are curious enough to explore a little further. On 
the other hand, we Mac users have some pretty high standards for 
interface, intuitiveness, and consistency (or, as we prefer to see it, 
everyone else has such low standards :-) ). So far, with Linux I have 
seen little evidence of intuitiveness and less of consistency (why, oh 
why does every single application have to invent its own command for 
"copy," "paste," "close," and "quit"?)

> I would dare say that Linux is addictive.

We'll see -- I'm still at the "gateway drug" phase, myself.

Thanks for taking the time to answer so many of my questions!

Best wishes,
Clint

-- 
Dr. Clinton C. MacDonald | <mailto:earthclint@earthlink.net>