> I... would not be willing to go through the Linux learning curve , to obtain what I see as minimal incremental benifits.

I hear this a lot, and I used to sympathize. However, the learning curve for a competent Win2K admin to move to Linux is not that bad any longer. I recently trained a "point-and-click" administrator -- a man who could barely admin Windows -- to admin a Linux box. In a week.

My wife installed Debian on her first try -- she's not computer-illiterate, but she's not even really a "power user". See, there are enough point-and-click administration tools out there that reduce the learning curve. You can learn to use -- and develop for -- Linux quickly, even if it takes a while to become really proficient.

. . . and on in the matter of *nix benefits, I suspect they're greater than NetWallah realizes. If all you're using the Perl language for is Windows-specific tasks, there's certainly very little point in developing in Perl on a non-Windows platform, but the *nix platform and Perl simply feel like a marriage made in heaven.

One of the things that makes me so pleased with Debian GNU/Linux (or, by extension, any *nix) is the broad range of additional functionality I get from the seamless functionality of Perl as an administrative tool. The ability to write scripts to perform somewhat complex tasks involving basic system functionality and data management in such a flexible, fairly limitless manner, and to do it so easily, adds a definite boost to the usefulness of a computer.

Meanwhile, text-based operations on Windows feel like doing battle with a man-eating tiger, with a wet noodle as my only weapon. Considering how much additional fine-grained control one can have from an operating environment that adds full shell functionality alongside whatever GUI tools you're using, or even without the GUI tools at all, I find the inability to make use of the CLI to the extent I can in Linux to be thoroughly frustrating in Windows. Maybe that's just me, though.

It's not easy to believe, looking back, that four years ago I thought of the command line as quaint and ultimately useless, though of strong nostalgic value. That's what I get for going from DOS to Windows, I suppose. Now that I've become thoroughly comfortable with and attached to Linux, though, I'm grateful to have finally found my way to an OS environment that doesn't devalue either CLI or GUI.

In fact, considering the vast sea of options available to me in configuring it, I find that *nix values the GUI more than Windows does.

- apotheon
CopyWrite Chad Perrin