[Novalug] Tinkering & Linux

Clif Flynt clif@cflynt.com
Mon Feb 1 10:07:00 EST 2010


A friend submitted this URL to me:

http://diveintomark.org/archives/2010/01/29/tinkerers-sunset

The short form is the lament that while computers of the '80s invited a
kid to experiment (BASIC as the base OS), the laws and computing
appliances of the 2000s forbid tinkering with your favorite toys.

I see his point: things like iPad, iPhone, and anything related to
DRM are not open to being tweaked by a user.  Android is a bit more
open, but the API and development environment have a fairly steep
learning curve.

I'll also concede that I don't want someone learning by experiment
while they have a live device (potentially) screwing up my cell phone
conversations.

DRM, DMCA, etc is another can of worms.

But, it occurs to me that the standalone Linux box is as good as an
Apple ][ for learning what you can tweak, what you shouldn't touch,
and how to reduce a valuable computing system to chunks of spinning
metal that you need to re-install on.

You can install Basic pretty easily, or use Tcl/Tk, Perl or Python
without too much effort.

Or even program in bash.

A Linux system is more forbidding than the old Apple ][ or TRS-80
that would boot to an OK> prompt and could be fixed by repowering.

Is it enough more forbidding to keep a 10 year old from experimenting?

Is the OLPC distro something you can get under the hood of, or is it
just another set of pre-packaged appliances you can use to do a
specific set of tasks?

Clif

-- 
... Clif Flynt ... http://www.cwflynt.com ... clif@cflynt.com ...
.. Tcl/Tk: A Developer's Guide (2nd edition) - Morgan Kauffman ..
. 17'th Annual Tcl/Tk Conference:  2010,  Oak Brook, IL  USA ..
.............  http://www.tcl.tk/community/tcl2010/  ............








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