Re: [MiNT] Re[2]: GEM boost

[Peter Slegg <p.slegg@scubadivers.co.uk>]

As a former Magic user who switched to Mint I wonder if my impressions
are useful to the group ?

Originally my brother bought an STfm back in 1987 which was modified
to TOS 2, 4Mb and a hard disk. Having read good things about Magic
and having read or heard very little about Mint I bought a copy
of Magic. I think it was version 4 or 5.

It was simple to install, reassuringly familiar and stable with apps
that ran and to be honest very little stuff didn't run.

When I heard about the Milan I wanted one but was a little discouraged
by the fact that there wasn't a version of Magic available. It arrived
late because the company I bought it from had so much trouble getting
it all working.

For the first couple of years I changed very little. I added loads of
nice GEM apps but the Mint partition was totally untouched. Then I
upgraded the mint.prg and started to learn a little more about how
the whole lot worked.

To be honest I don't like the wat uni* organises it's files. I hate
the fact the software is scattered across the disc. I much prefer
the GEM approach of locating each app in it's own folder and just
being able to delete it whenever I want with no side effects. Having
5 versions of Aniplayer installed is simplicity itself, I just have
5 folders.

Also, I hate playing "hunt the file" when some config file has to be
edited.

I had no previous experience of package managers like RPM. tar.gz was
annoying enough since I couldn't use nice friendly GEM progs like TWo-in One.

I did manually install a few RPMs from the command line but I am an ATari
user and not a fan of cli. I had enough of them with TOPS10, VMS, MVS, Unix,
DOS etc.

The RPM Tool app makes life a bit easier but like using Windows Installers
you just have to hope it's all going to work and not wreck anything. Scary
sometimes. I never know if I should be doing Install or Update !

It does seem to work though and for maintaining the OS level stuff it
has been fine.

Regards,

Peter