Hi Jasen! :-)

 JB> almost.... say you want to change the console fontto some bitmap you 
 JB> have oon hand you do an ioctl() instead of a write() but that still
 JB> beats the DOS way (a bios call)
Yeah, at some place the difference between devices has to show itself,
granted. But it's still always the same interface, open() then ioctl(),
although the values to use in the ioctl vary from device type to device
type.

 JB> yeah, there are thick books about configuring windows,  it's not the 
 JB> sort of task the average user is fully capable of reguardless of what
 JB> GUI stuff is put on the face of the task...
The GUI has the effect to make people think "I don't need to know,
it's all so easy, I just need to click here and there"...

 JB> or to perform some maintenance tasks... (like backups (something I 
 JB> should start doing now that I've got the lan operating))
Well, that's a special case that could do with only read access being
available to root for everything, and write access only to the backup area.

Ciao
Pascal

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