Microsoft networking is 'graphical click and popup based' and assumes that the user is not interested in learning about the detail of how the actual network processes work. The overal philosophy is 'users don't care about the details, they want it to be spoon fed to them'.

UNIX is built on a quite different philosophy. One of the tenants of that philosophy is that the user needs to "command the system" and not "the system commands the user." This results in the need to learn an incredible amount of detail about the underlying processes and structures.

This board assumes that newbies are self-motivated with a strong desire to learn. We cannot motivate nor advise folks on how to make a mental shift from the mindset created by point-and-click experience.

I can tell you that on the server-side, point-and-click is normally risky and takes much more time than understanding the command line side. However, on the desktop side, point-and-click has merit.

I'm very suprised to read you are an electrical engineer and a C programmer but are not inclined to dig in a learn UNIX from the posts you reference.

Perhaps a nice expresso machine and a month in isolation with your favorite UNIX platform? This is how most of us got started