China DOS Union

MCLinux is short for Mini Chinese Linux, meaning a miniature Chinese Linux. I heard MCLinux could fit on one floppy disk, so I downloaded it and tried it out to see what it was really like.

The result left me very disappointed. This so-called MCLinux, naturally like BasicLinux and the like, is entirely character-based, just like DOS. As for this so-called Chinese Linux, I looked it over from top to bottom, and the interface was all in English, without a single bit of Chinese anywhere. What kind of “Chinese Linux” is that! On the contrary, the whole screen was full of English.

As for practicality, the help features in this Linux really leave much to be desired. At the start you have to enter a username and password, but there isn’t even a prompt. First-time users often have no idea what they’re supposed to type. If I hadn’t had a bit of experience and known that I had to enter root, otherwise I wouldn’t have been able to use it at all. But that’s only a small issue. More importantly, the usability of Linux’s various commands is very poor. Linux, like DOS, uses a character-based interface, yet in terms of ease of use it falls far behind. Whether it’s MCLinux or BasicLinux, I didn’t see any decent command help at all (for example, in DOS you can use DIR/? to see complete help for the DIR command). Commands like LS in Linux are also not as useful or easy to use as commands like DIR under DOS. I wanted to look at what was on the hard disk, but no matter what I did I couldn’t find the right place to view it. Sigh... better leave Linux and go back to DOS...

My feeling is that Linux is much more complicated than DOS and is not suitable for ordinary users. Many commands are hard to learn and hard to remember, even more so than when someone first starts learning DOS. Linux clearly distinguishes uppercase and lowercase, for example root and ROOT are completely different things. Linux usually does not support multitasking and such features (GUI programs like X-Win running on the Linux/Unix platform are naturally another matter), and it also starts up quite a bit slower than DOS.

As for the so-called graphical interface under Linux, that actually is not Linux itself, because Linux is entirely character-based. On top of it there are some GUI programs such as X-Win, just like Win3.x/9x running on DOS, which provide GUI functions.

The above is my own experience from using it. Criticism and corrections are welcome.

Everyone, come and talk about your impressions of using Linux too...

wengier, where can I download BASICLINUX.

BASICLINUX should be something from SLACKWARE LINUX, I think it ought to be on the SLACKWARE LINUX CD
As for what Wengier said about Linux not supporting multitasking, that isn’t accurate. LINUX has its own process management system (command-line based). When executing a command, adding & after the command lets it run in the background without intervention, and there are corresponding commands to bring it back to the foreground, etc.…………
And as for the help system, actually, LINUX’s help system is very comprehensive. You can use "man 所需要帮助的命令" (without the quotes) to view help, and it gives fairly detailed help. Also, most commands can show help with -h or --help. But because LINUX commands are powerful, their usage is complicated, so the help files can be hard to search through for what you need. So for ordinary users, LINUX really is too complicated; DOS is still simpler and more straightforward.

PS: Boss Wengier’s name is too complicated, I can never remember it clearly. Whenever I mention his name I have to copy and paste it. How about using something simpler and friendlier?

Oh, is it really that hard to remember? If you can’t remember it, then just do like they do (such as minisheep and others), and just call me W.

LanE: The CD is too big, there’s no way to download it, so you’d better provide one that can be downloaded. Or upload it to the forum. WENGIER is already well-known now, so it can’t be changed. If it’s changed, nobody will know who it is.

Haha... I’ll just abbreviate it as wer

Everything has its pros and cons.

“Linux clearly distinguishes uppercase and lowercase, for example root and ROOT are completely different things”
Case sensitivity isn’t necessarily always a bad thing. Surely lots of people want the system to distinguish uppercase and lowercase.
And LINUX itself doesn’t have the long filename problem.

“If I hadn’t had a bit of experience and known that I had to enter root”
In all LINUX/UNIX systems, the superuser name is root. This is something you have to know if you want to learn LINUX/UNIX.

“I didn’t see any decent command help at all”
There is some. Most commands have help with --help. You can get more help with the man command. Though sometimes there’s so much of it you can’t finish reading it. No key points...

“Linux usually does not support multitasking and such features”
How could that be? LINUX/UNIX is a typical multi-user, multitasking operating system. If it weren’t multitasking, then commands like KILL would be useless. DOS, on the other hand, is a typical single-user, single-tasking system.

“As for the so-called graphical interface under Linux, that actually is not Linux itself, because Linux is entirely character-based. On top of it there are some GUI programs such as X-Win, just like Win3.x/9x running on DOS, which provide GUI functions.”
This issue also has both pros and cons.
The downside is that because the kernel itself is not GUI-based the way WIN is, where the kernel itself is the GUI, efficiency is relatively low when simulating graphics. On lower-end computers, running a GUI under it is not as good as WIN’s GUI. But as computer hardware improves, this shortcoming will gradually shrink, and may even stop being a problem.
The upside is that because the kernel is not GUI, LINUX/UNIX only treats X-WIN as an ordinary program. If this GUI crashes (when WIN at that point can only leave you staring at a blue screen), the system can very easily KILL that process and then run a new GUI again, while system stability and other tasks are unaffected. Also, LINUX/UNIX can run several GUIs on different virtual consoles. That’s something WIN is far from being able to match.

I think UNIX/LINUX is a very excellent system. It’s powerful and worth learning.

The future DOS64 will be the most outstanding of all, supporting multitasking, virtual machines, skins, multiple GUIs, OS emulators, and so on. You’ll be able to run one copy of WIN in each DOS window—how wonderful that would be!

The following is quoted from yiyesong on 2003-6-5 22:59:58:
LanE: The CD is too big, there’s no way to download it, so you’d better provide one that can be downloaded. Or upload it to the forum. WENGIER is already well-known now, so it can’t be changed. If it’s changed, nobody will know who it is.

For convenience, here I’ll just call him Boss W (because I’m replying right now, so there’s no way to copy the name -_-U). Just calling him that here, it feels convenient and friendly
The one below is Basic Linux1.3. Because it was a bit large, I extracted the original first, then compressed it separately. Just extract them into one directory and that’ll do
I also have a Basic Linux2.01 here, but I hear that one needs two floppy disks. If you want it, I’ll upload it for you next time Open attachment
Open attachment
Remember to scan for viruses…………

http://www.volny.cz/basiclinux/

BasicLinux is very good for beginners. Its networking features are very strong (it feels great, hehe! Once I set my ip to the same as my classmate’s. He was using 2k, and he actually hung, saying there was an ip conflict. Why is linux so “overbearing,” hehe)
I think it’s very suitable for getting familiar with linux. If you use redhat, there’s too much stuff and you won’t know where to begin.
The linux “problems” Wengier mentioned simply do not exist at all.
Using ctrl+z can put the current program into the background and return to the shell.
Using jobs lets you see how many tasks there are.
The fg command can bring them back out.

You can use mount to load partitions and CDs too.

The feeling linux gives me is very “soft” (when typing and executing programs, it won’t just freeze there).

Honestly, after using linux, I don’t even want to touch dos anymore.

As for Wengier saying linux has poor usability, maybe it’s just because he’s not used to it.
I think if you took someone who only uses linux and told him to use dos, he wouldn’t be used to it either.

I think if you want to reach the point of basically understanding linux, at the very least you should be able to make a linux boot disk yourself (not a boot loader disk).

If you can do that, then I think you’ll be able to get a pretty good grasp of linux’s file layout and startup process.

Everyone can go take a look at www.chinaunix.net and learn from each other.
The unix family is an old predecessor. Back then dos was modeled after unix, and after so many years of development it naturally has many advantages. Maybe if everyone takes a look and combines the advantages, we could make a boot disk much stronger than what we have now.

I just tried this BasicLinux uploaded by LanE (actually it’s about the same version as the BasicLinux I used before), and the result was still the same. The interface was of course all English, but commands like man had no response at all. Pressing keys like ctrl+z didn’t do anything either.

Linux really is a bit too complicated. At least for beginners it doesn’t feel friendly (DOS has some of that too, but DOS’s /? is often much more practical), so it’s only suitable for advanced users.

Linux is quite a bit larger than DOS, especially those current Linux distributions, which take several CDs to install. Downloading them really isn’t easy!

It’s true that DOS’s GNUish and Unixish aspects have made DOS much more powerful, and made today’s DOS richer and more practical. But on the other hand, the complexity of the Unix/Linux family hasn’t improved much. If it wants to become widespread, it still has a long way to go.