[PLUG] Redhat changes, fedora

[Jeme A Brelin]

On Tue, 4 Nov 2003, Russ Johnson wrote:
> Case in point. I have a digital camera. Here's the two methods:
>
> 1> Linux.
> Configure the system to see USB devices as drives. This involves
> configuring SCSI emulation support, and sometimes a kernel rebuild. Once
> that's done, I write a shell script to mount the camera as a drive,
> download the pictures and rename them. That means finding a third party
> utility that can read the jpeg image and rename the image appropriately.
> Tweak files in /dev so that *I* as a user can do this. I don't want to
> su to root everytime I copy pictures to my system.
>
> 2> Windows.
> Put CD that came with camera in drive. Install drivers. Install other
> programs that came with camera. Plug camera in. It works.

Woah.

So many issues to address here, I don't know where to begin.

First, you're not talking about what you have to do with every GNU/Linux
distribution.  Get that clear, first.  Some are already configured
properly for this sort of thing.

Second, what you've done in your "Linux" example above is far more
interesting and flexible than what you've done with the Windows example.
There was a presumed level of interaction on your part and you went for
it; it's a whole different paradigm.  It's just as difficult (or perhaps
moreso) to do exactly what you did on the Linux system in Windows.  I, for
one, would have to check many references to write useful script in Windows
that would arbitrarily copy and rename files according some predefined
standards of naming based on date and time and file type.  Multiply that
by a ten thousand if you want it to happen every time you connect your
camera.  The approach you described in 1 assumes this is easy and
straightforward.

However, if you just want your GNU/Linux system to do what the Windows
system does in your example 2 above, then it's more like this:

apt-get install gphoto (or your favorite gui apt utility). Plug in camera.
It works.

You've got your gphoto icon on your applications menu.

And that's that.  The software does everything you can do with the
comparable Windows software (and maybe more) and has a common and simple
interface.

If we compare apples with apples, the differences vanish.

J.
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     Jeme A Brelin
    jeme at brelin.net
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