#### "The Linux Gazette...making Linux just a little more fun!"

# The Answer Guy

#### By James T. Dennis, linux-questions-only@ssc.com
Starshine Technical Services, http://www.starshine.org/

### eterm quickie + general commment (linux SUPERGRAN)

From liam on Thu, 31 Dec 1998

Dear Answerguy,

A Quickie: (please read this!)

WHERE THE HELL CAN I GET THE GRAPHICAL TERMINAL ETERM??? (The

new replacement for rxvt, you know, the one that supports pixmaps ....not the terminal mode of emacs, great as that is). I can't find it anywhere, it's not in the sunsite or GNU ftp archives, it's mentioned in some HOWTOS, but with no reference as to how to obtain it. Is it part of commercial X distributions only or something?

yours confusedly, Liam.

> As far as I know Eterm is the Enlightenment inspired xterm. The fastest way to find files like this these days is the Freshmeat QuickSearch feature. This lead me right to Eterm and its web home page at:

> > http://www.tcserv.com/Eterm

A Comment: (linux SUPERGRAN)

On a personal note, my familiy in London who know LESS THAN NOTHING about computers, got their first PC (assembled by me) for Christmas, and are all using a pleasent Linux/KDE/Netscape+Applixware combo which they aver they find much easier to use than "those funny computers at the university" (- i.e. basic win95+Novell/IE/MSOffice monstrosity). Obvoiusly I set it all up and do 100% of the sysadmin, but still even my GRAN uses it (with my sisters help!) for e-mail & browsing. They are quite pleased that it never crashes

On My Soapbox: (consign to `/dev/null` now if looks too long &or boring)

Great column! Nice to see someone with the patience to answer those 'naieve' (i.e. uninformed!) newbie questions of the general form "So what's this Linux all about, can I run it on a PC ..." e.t.c. A waste of time and annoyance to old-timer hacks and busy developers it may be, but if the OS community is to get the message accros to joe public as well as relative "techies" (sys-admins, businessmen, university students like myself...) in the rapidly accelerating battle for hearts and minds; it is vital that everyone makes an effort to encourage outsiders to give it a try. There is an hightened level in media attention in OS & Linux right now which will not neccesairily last forever, and an exciting window of opportunity with the rapid development of 'user-freindly' desktop environments such as KDE and GNOME. It is all too much to ask of one poor Answerguy! Indeed it is an issue that needs attention from the OS community with hopefully a more rounded systematic approach developed: the risk of inaction is that growth of Linux in the home/light use market does not come quickly enough, and home/light users get locked into a depressing windows 2000 (NT5) "development" cycle, (if windows 2000 actually gets off the ground by 2010 that is!).

Two years ago I myself was converted to the 'light side of the force'and became a newbie (perhaps I still am), and if it wasn't for an achademic UNIX familiarity, and a good freind who was my local guru and walked me through the first few weeks, I would not be e-mailing you now (although a lot has changed in two years). I have been pleased to spread Linux to four freinds since then, (walking them through their first install e.t.c), and a healthy informal Edinburgh LUG, has sprung up consisting mostly of home-users. The growth has been phenomenal as all the 'statistics' attest, but in the coming two years word-of-mouth will not be enough.

> Glad you like it. Please feel free to do your part in the great tech support effort. Join a users group in your area. Help out at the occasional installfest. Jump into the newsgroups or onto the occasional mailing list to answer a few questions when you can.

> There are still some rough spots for us to go through. However, I think that we'll make it. Linux currently enjoys about 2.5 percent of the desktop market according to one of the recent surveys. So that's our next goal. We tripled our penetration into the server market last year --- I think we can at least quadruple our share of the desktop (for a total of 10%). Talk to me after the Y2K dust settles in 12 months and we'll see if we made that goal.

##### Copyright © 1999, James T. Dennis
Published in The Linux Gazette Issue 37 February 1999

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