Thanks. I'm an old, old Biophysicist. And before the Supercomputer building there was a wooden army barracks building on the site called Temporary North Court Engineering. Prof. Otto Schmitt and his lovely wife ran the place as the "Biophysics Dept." He invented digital electronics copying nerve electronics, and had tons of refrigeration equipment cooling more tube computer gear, etc. that over-filled the building. When they were going to tear the building down for the supercomputer building they had a large front end loader bucket in Otto's second floor office window so he got the message. I had worked night guard downtown St. Paul, NWBell and they said it might be a terrorist target. Didn't know what a terrorist was, but the 7 floors of tangled wires and sparking switches would have been hard to replace. So we shifted gears and pushed fiber optic microcomputer networking from abandoned Lowertown, St. Paul. At a meeting of some wonderful people, I provided a printout of drawn electro-optic properties of protein liquid crystal structures. I was a beta tester for Microsoft QDraw. I have a lot of stories like that. During those early days, I think Marks Dayton was Commissioner of Economic Development. Don't count on good guys from government. So I don't know how to start-up beginners in Linux. My efforts now are pointing out all the new CO2 in the air is making plants grow much faster. So the optical biophysics using solar energy to make biofuels and biochar is interesting to some. Instrumentation is again critical. Surprisingly, RS232 works better in newer linux kernels. Iznogoud wrote: > Rick, > You mean you do not real your email with Mutt? What's wrong with you!?!? I > would still be on Elm if it could do IMAP back in 2000+ when I switched. I > live on the terminal. > > Nothing like a real-time OS. Microcontrollers are for mission-critical > components, like pace-makers, your car's ECU, etc. But everything else should > be boot-strapped out of a real-time OS, like Linux. > > As for Linux programming, I recommend that one from O'Reilly... what is it... > Linux System Programming I think. Great resource for the experienced Linux > hacker. > > I really do think that a class for unix is not a bad start. The UofM's MSI > (Minnesota Supercomputing Institute) has a class for introduction to Unix and > Linux. Most things are made simple but a good start. I tould be best if a > noobie had somebody to explain the philosophy behind the filessytem, user > permissions, essential components of the kernel (even at the highest level) > and a lot about essential utilities in /bin /usr/bin. The potential barrier > is high and time to learn is not everybody can afford; that is why Apple is > in business today. > > In comparing Linux distros I saw this said about Slackware users: "Let's say > if you are having a problem, the slackware user is the most likely to solve it > for you." So that is a starting point for the advanced Linux user. Patrick > Volkerding still lives in MN and is likely on this list. > IN > > _______________________________________________ > TCLUG Mailing List - Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minnesota > tclug-list at mn-linux.org > http://mailman.mn-linux.org/mailman/listinfo/tclug-list >