Thanks to everyone for the help on modems. I actually discovered the dip script tool last night in an additional book I bought yesterday, and got my network connection working. Nevertheless, all the suggestions for exactly the best way to do this will be very useful.
I found the easier dialog boxes in x-windows later in the night, and found out by experimentation that I could ignore most of the entries requested. So I got Netscape running last night, with email and so forth. Next, and much more intimidating, I want to convert my NT web server to Linux. Any general suggestions about apache, linux web servers in general, and ecommerce tools for that, would be appreciated.
I would have been happier with radio buttons and grey outs based on installation type desired, like Windows and Mac. So I guess that's work for me to contribute. So I guess the big thing I learned is there is no no-brainer modem and internet installation and operation like there is in win95.
In the 1980's I was intimately familiar with modem and serial port handling, and even wrote drivers and so forth for that under UNIX, but I was just taken aback that the installation was so primitive compared to Windows. It actually didn't occur to me that I was supposed to be writing scripts.
I guess everyone that sets up these boxes needs to be a programmer, eh? Good thing I am one.
I am used to having to enter the info for gateways and so forth, but maybe I will try putting together something to make this easy for ordinary PC users. What there is appears to be unusable for a non-programmer. It is too mixed in with the complex stuff that Internet server admins will use, I think. All the mandatory stuff needs to be in one place that is obvious as far as how to get to it during installation and later. And there is no reason for users to be writing modem scripts. The only thing a modem user does under Win95 is type in the phone number. And the ISP tells them how to set up all the internet codes, guiding them through filling in the form blanks over the telephone.
So, to have a shot against MSFT (other products than NT) this needs to improve. Against NT this is clearly good enough already, since it is winning there.
Thanks again.
Chaz |
