I got my first computer when the OS required one to learn instructions from a C: prompt. CD meant change directory, and there were other commands running from that, del, edit, and so on.

One had to write their own BATs, edit command.com, and so on.

ah, the memories. I remember the batch menus system I created at the dos prompt. that was cool. I remember my first game hack, done on the Ancient Art of War, which enabled me to edit campain maps in the map editor. . . those were the days. (this was on a 286 . . . )

I hated to see them go.. . . except I kinda liked ditching DOS4GW, HIMEM(sp?), and EMM386 and the having the array of boot disks for different games. . . that i was glad to get rid of.

It looks to me as if Linux is requiring people to learn something similar all over again to install it. After it's installed it goes to your basic GUI.

Well all the big forfront distros have pretty graphical installation tools, Redhat, Mandrake, SuSe, Im sure Debian too. Gentoo seems to be the exception. But you should not have to see a command line except for maybe/sometimes a command line menu asking which type of installation you want. Learning the command line comes into play when installing programs and other things, and the inevitable "getting something to work" part of trouble shooting.

The level of learning that goes into Linux swamps that of DOS. You could learn DOS in 15 - 30 minutes. . . Linux, geez its been year and I am still learning. Its got quite a learning curve.

Goodluck,
Justin Kelly