Linux.com: More Stupid Linux Tricks Feb 25, 2000, 17 :14 UTC (1 Talkback[s]) (4990 reads) (Other stories by Rob Bos)
"The idea that the best way to convert a person is to demonstrate some of the incredibly cool, useful, or just
plain well-designed stuff about Linux. So, since I'm out of ideas this week too, I'll do something similar --
but instead concentrating on some of the smaller tools and what they can do."
"Let's face it: Unix isn't a single, large product -- it's a fantastically modular system. It's so modular, in
fact, that every component can in theory be replaced! So much so, that there is no single part of the
Unix architecture that can, strictly speaking, be called Unix. The Linux kernel is just an implementation
of an API, and an abstraction layer for hardware. That's not Unix. Neither are any of the potentially
thousands of programs that make up Solaris, Linux, BSD, or any of the other ones. Any individual
component is trivial, and is a part of a larger, cohesive whole."
"Within that collective framework of tools, the user learns how to take advantage of them, one by one,
learning how they interact and lock together, and their purposes and use. Often, a tool is used for
purposes very unlike its intent. Almost frighteningly so, in fact. Very impressively so. Showing someone
what these tools, few of which work as well as eye candy, can do to make your life easier is how you
"clinch the sale" so to speak. So what if Linux can do all these cool things to impress people? Now you
have to show them what it can do to make their lives easier in some small way."
