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Simon Said: >Shell scripting is a minority activity, and anyone who needs can RTFM, learn "info", "apropos", "man". Teach a man to fish. The only command that woke me up during my Unix Fundamentals course was the "man" command. Admittedly a few basics like what "ls" does and what those interesting octal numbers at the side meant, went a long way to helping me along. I was a child of DOS and since DOS nicked most of its directory navigation / management "tools" from UNIX (and renamed a few on the way) it wasn't too much effort to port myself to the Unix mindset (in the user sence at least). It amazes me how many users still cant grasp the concept of a hierarchical folder structure, or worse think they have grasped the concept of a hierarchical folder structure. I could forgive this in DOS because its not so intuitive, but with modern GUI browser interfaces its difficult (maybe just for me) to see how anybody can misinterpret it. Man was/is fantastic, sure we have the web now, but if your ISP fails you still have man (of course now I am going to start a man / info flame war ;-) ). The problem I think is giving people the right set of tools to be able to be confident that they understand when they go into RTFM mode. We should all encourage the "teach a man to fish" approach but somtimes we dont even know where the lake is, I think that the challenge that faces many educational establishments with regard to taking up linux. Of course what the "right set of tools" are is a matter for great debate. Perhaps the first point in any linux tuition should be "If you come here to be spoon fed think again !" but then it is depressing how many people still want to be taught by route. So I think you need teach / discover the foundations with a spin on self help and where to go if you get stuck. Having said that perhaps teachers with a linux mindset are the only teachers who would start by giving each student a manual on how to build a desk and pointing to a pile of scrap wood and metal on the floor nearby :-). Tom. Information in this message is confidential and may be legally privileged. It is the intended solely for the person ( or persons) to whom it is addressed. If you are not the intended recipient, please notify the sender, and please delete the message from your system immediately. The views in this message are personal, they are not necessarily those of Torbay Council. -- The Mailing List for the Devon & Cornwall LUG Mail majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxx with "unsubscribe list" in the message body to unsubscribe.