More about getting an address book to dial the phone. 4715

In the Usenet newsgroup comp.os.linux.misc, in article

The most common O-S that users are familiar with. Lots of newbies are terrified at having to learn something new and complex. Say what you will about microsoft, they have managed to dumb the user interface down so that nearly anyone can use it to accomplish something (perhaps even useful - but that may be stretching it). They do this by attempting to second guess what the user wants. Linux started out as a UNIX clone, and UNIX is harder to learn. Many distributions are trying to become more popular by appearing more like what the rest of the world uses.

I suspect it's because most of this is free software developed in spare time to fill a programmers personal itch. They don't have the breadth of equipment to test on. Then, we boil it back to windoze mode, where we don't want to scare the sheep with complex technical things.

No, UNIX is a multi-user O-S, and a lot of development took place on larger computers. You wouldn't want user A being able to mess with the hardware (mount-unmount disks, connect-disconnect the phone) while user B or others might be using that stuff. With 'umount', there is the use check, but there isn't one with the serial port.

No, it's not in your original post.

compton ~$ grep -i portvar-spool-news-comp-os-linux-misc-612255 that it never asked me to tell it what port the modem is on, or compton ~$

And are you sure it's a sportsman, and not a Sportster?

compton ~$ grep -ic sportster modem.list 84 compton ~$ grep -ic sportsman modem.list 0 compton ~$

Non-standard? Yes. The definition of serial ports used in x86 systems goes back to IBM in the early 1980s. They defined 2 and then 2 more ports most people know as COM1 through COM4. These had specific hardware addresses on the ISA I-O bus (8 addresses starting at 0x3f8, 0x2f8, 0x3e8 and 0x2e8 respectively), and defaulted to IRQ 3 or 4. Many could be set to use other IRQ, but the I-O addresses were cast in stone. PCI devices don't use those address ranges - try looking atvar-log-messages around boot time, or for SuSE invar-log-boot.msg. "Can not be expected to work"? See the Modem-HOWTO - it should be on your system.

is a rather good book. My "address book" is an ordinary text file, accessed with a dumb script somewhat similar to what the Grendel shows.

Must be nice to be so sophisticated. My address book has phone numbers as short as four digits, and as long as 19, and it all works transparently.

As noted above.

You mis-interpret my reply - the limitations are because there is such a wide capability, YOU have to actually learn something about it to determine which of the many applications meets your needs. You might know how to drive a car. An 18 wheeler is somewhat similar, but if it has a six speed non-synchro transmission, and a two speed axle, you aren't going to get the same level of performance as a '2CV', never mind something modern.

I mention it, because KDE and Gnome are being presented as the most common user interface - for better or for worse. You don't have to use that, but that means you have to look at the other applications.

The limitation is the distribution. You don't have to use SuSE (there are over two hundred other choices), and even if you do, you can set things up to use the command line only. It's called 'choice'. I'm running X and a dirt simple window manager (fvwm) because that gives me a bunch of terminals - I have 20 open at the moment, and there isn't an icon in sight.

This comparatively simple workstation has about 4300 man documents, only about 100 info pages, 473 HOWTOs and mini-howtos,

447 compton ~$

and 447 files named README. The material is there. Linux, and your distribution, and your desktop don't want to overpower you by presenting all choices - you have to look for it and decide which you want to use.

Old guy