[PLUG] Linux nomenclature (was Ubuntu ...)

[Keith Lofstrom]

On Tue, Mar 28, 2006 at 06:58:50PM -0800, John Jordan wrote:
> Indeed, education is the key. But I still must fault Linux a bit here. 
> Someone else said "/usr/bin" is as easy to learn as "c:\Program 
> Files." I must disagree. It's a picky point, to be sure, but a novice 
> will have no idea what "/usr/bin" is for. When I started using Linux a 
> year ago I literally thought it was the trash folder. Well, it said "bin" 
> didn't it? I'll agree that "c:\Program Files" is not completely clear 
> either, but it's a lot clearer than "/usr/bin." 
> 
> Perhaps the Linux for Dummies edition should come with a file 
> manager that displays folders translated into non-Unix terms. I 
> don't mean into Windows terms, as that is also not perfectly clear 
> either. I mean, start over from scratch and make labels that no 
> beginner could possibly confuse.

That is a good point - I have been looking at "bin" and seeing an
abbreviation for "binary" for over 30 years.  That was the case in
DOS, for example, and in CPM and unix and way back to the first
PDP-8 I worked on.  There was a time when the "ARY" in "binary",
stored in RAM, cost as much as a cup of coffee.  Abbreviations
saved money.  The trash directory came much later, when disks
became cheap enough that saving discarded files was an option.

Some bright person at Microsoft realized the "bin/trash" confusion, and
hence "Program Files" was introduced for Windoze.  And yes, Microsoft
has had many bright people.  It's the implant that makes them evil.

Consider the phrase "acoustic guitar".  Before electric guitars, 
all guitars were "acoustic guitars", and the adjective "acoustic"
was redundant and unnecessary.  Words change with context.

Programmers invent nomenclature at a prodigious rate.  Unimaginative
ones forget that their nomenclature may last a long time, and may
bounce off other nomenclature from other development threads, or off
new situations that import concepts from the Real World (tm).  Take
the word "port", which is used in half-a-dozen contexts in computers,
all formerly isolated, now tied together.  When contexts merge, 
nomenclatures can self-destruct. 

So when choosing names, keep in mind that context will shift during
the life of a program, sometimes lethally.  Perhaps we will need
"intertemporalization" as well as "internationalization" files for
our programs, to accomodate context shifts.

But back to Linux.  John, you are in a great position to serve the
community when you run into these ambiguities and misnamings.  Your
observations are valuable, and can help a lot of people.  A year
from now, all this will be old hat and Linuxisms will be obvious
and natural to you, so writing this stuff down now is important. 
May I suggest you start a blog or a wiki, and get this stuff
captured where Google can find it? 

If you need help setting up a wiki, we can work on it at the next
clinic.  If you don't have a website to put a wiki on, perhaps we
can get started on that, too.  I can loan you space on my server,
if you pay for yet another domain name (use dyndns.org), and in
time you can move everything to your own server.

Keith

-- 
Keith Lofstrom          keithl at keithl.com         Voice (503)-520-1993
KLIC --- Keith Lofstrom Integrated Circuits --- "Your Ideas in Silicon"
Design Contracting in Bipolar and CMOS - Analog, Digital, and Scan ICs