-> *** Quoting Darryl Perry from a message to Mike Roberts ***
->  MR> Mark, Forgive the ignorance.. But why is Linux so popular for
BBS software
->  MR> now, is it ala a OS/2 type of thing or a distinct hate of
windows or is it

->  DP> I know you didn't address this to me, but I will take a shot at it.

-> Thanks Darryl. I just wondered as I never got in on the OS/2 Craze, though it 
-> was a rage at one point for bbs's. Now it seems to be Linux. I was curious as 
-> to what it was and how it worked and how it made things so much better for 
-> those of you who want to run it. Thanks for taking the time to explain a 
-> little.

-> What kind of a learning curve is there in learning Linux if you are new to it 
-> and how different are the different flavors?

Well, Unix is Unix.  The flavors aren't so different at the command line
level.  Where you usually see the differences are in the "extras".  Many
of the different distros will have their own desktop configurations.
Each will usually have KDE or GNOME, at the X level, but will run other
windows managers or have their own apps like a control center, etc. 

The only other differences is the number and kinds of apps that they
bundle with their distro.  I've seen some distros that give you the
basics on one CD.  Others have everything on 4-5 CDs.

Beyond that, there's not much of a difference.

As far as the learning curve?  There's some, but not much.  There are
differences in the file systems of course.  There are no 'A:' drives or
'C:' drives, etc.  And there are predefined directories that are on
almost all distros.  /etc, /bin, /usr, /opt, /tmp that you don't find in
dos or windows.  /etc holds most of the configuration files for just
about all the programs on the system.  /bin and /usr/bin hold just about
all the binaries.  /opt holds most of the 'non-system' programs, or
add-ons.  Oh, and I forgot!  Every user gets a directory in /home.

You also have your choice of 'shells' to operate in.  The equivalent in
DOS is 'CMD' or 'COMMAND.COM'.  Different shells offer different
built-in commands, and affect the way different scripts work.  The
standard in linux is BASH, or Bourne Again SHell.  BASH is a freeware
version of the Bourne Shell.  There is also the Korn Shell (KSH) and
C-Shell (CSH).  I personally like using the Korn Shell, but it is very
similar to the BASH shell, so I could use either one without knowing it
sometimes.

These shells, or bascially your command-line interfaces are much more
powerful than DOS's COMMAND.COM.

There's more, but you will have to just try it out to see what you
think.





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