Making Linux Look Harder Than It Is

drkich writes: "According to an article on The Register (by our very own roblimo). Many 'gurus' teaching new users about Linux make it look harder than it needs to be, and apparently fail to explain that yes, you can make PowerPoint-style presentations in Linux, you can view Web Pages that use Flash animation and other "glitz" features, and that you can manage all your files though simple "point, click, drag and drop" visual interfaces. Could the biggest problem with Linux usability be that most of the people teaching newbies to use Linux are too smart and know too much?"

Comments

Yes

[global_diffusion]

I'd say yes. When I first started out, there was a lot of hand waving and "this is too complicated for you." Then I looked at it linuxdoc.org and said, "this is easy."

But on the other hand...

[sterno]

While linux can be difficult, if you know how to get support it can be a lot easier. Heck if you want some help on this one, e-mail me, I've beat my head against SAMBA a few times. But look at newsgroups, IRC, and websites and you can find gobs of useful info.

Remember Linux was designed for geeks by geeks and slowly it's working its way back to being usable by normal people. There's still the occasional chink in the armor though.

Re:But on the other hand...

[prismatic]

and the entire text of the book is available online in either PDF or HTML format.

i'd personally recommend this very strongly. its my primary source of samba information, and has help me set up a few networks to work rather seamlessly.

i hope that helps, and that you stick to linux, too. its a wonderful world to live in.

No, the problem is not that it looks too hard

[Monkeyman334]

It is too hard. Okay, maybe not too hard, but definitely a bit harder than Windows or Mac. After the wu-ftpd warning I decided to update all my RedHat 6.2 servers to the latest version. What do you know, the RPM doesn't work. Why? Because it wants RPM version 4. So I go to install RPM 4, it wants glibc. Surprise surprise, glibc wants RPM 4. And when I got my RedHat user friend of many years, he managed to get glibc installed using force or nodeps, but RPM version 4 and wu-ftpd also wanted xinetd, and for some reason we couldn't get it installed. So we had to resort to getting the latest 7.2 CDs and taking the server down for a while for an upgrade. Windows on the other hand, will tell you when updates are there. It installs them automagically and one reboot is all that's needed. I hear people claim that Windows Update can make it unbootable, I've never seen it happen.

Now, installing something like flash under Mozilla/Linux. I managed to install it fairly easily. But at our crowded computer lab at school, where the only box left was a linux one (we usually use mac), a student couldn't quite figure it out. He downloaded the file, and that was the end of his knowledge. He doesn't know how to use tar. And I'm sure he didn't know what root was or where mozilla was installed. I even had to start X for him. In Windows/IE it's auto install. You click "Yes" on a prompt and it's installed.

When I was first running Debian I wanted to get my sound card running to play some music. I went into modconf and I just couldn't get it installed, even though a pnpdump seemed to find it. So a friend suggested ALSA, which I tried to install. What do ya know, I need to do a kernel upgrade. It still doesn't work. In Windows its found, you put in the driver CD or floppy, don't have to worry about mounting, and a reboot. Maybe it's just my crappy hardware, or I'm just stupid, but with 6 billion people on this planet, I'm sure more than one person has the same problem as I do. The worst part is I got smart people with their degrees to try and help me out, who have been using linux for years. Like the sysadmin for our school district, someone else who just got their CS degree and is a debian package maintainer, someone who is in college learning the kernel. They couldn't get it installed as fast I could, someone who has taken zero (0) college courses in Windows.

Re:No, the problem is not that it looks too hard

[yesthatguy]

Although this is a bit offtopic, what you did was a bit unnecessary. Since you're running RH 6.2, you need to grab the packages that are built for 6.2, wu-ftpd-2.6.1-0.6x.21.i386. If you grab all 6.2 packages, then it will work fine. As far as upgrading your "RPM" rpms, that generally *always* involves a RedHat version upgrade, especially to a new major number.
As another poster mentioned, you can easily use up2date in 7.2 to keep your machines updated - it works a lot like Windows Update or apt-get, automatically grabbing the necessary/desired RPMs and installing them for you.

For the installing flash example, how was he running mozilla already to get flash if you had to start X for him? I completely understand what you're saying about the problem, but that just seemed a little weird to me.

I think that you'll find hardware gets adopted by Linux distros pretty well. Every successive release of RedHat that I've installed on machines has gone a better and better job recognizing and installing hardware without me having to go in and recompile or anything. If you have a computer that's a year or two old, you should probably be able to install something like RH 7.2, or the latest unstable Debian and have nearly all of the hardware supported without manufacturers' or third-party drivers.

Re:No, the problem is not that it looks too hard

[Nater]

If you had kept up with the updates as they came out (as all people who maintain and operate a computer should), you would have gotten the intermediate versions of RPM and glibc that eased the transition. The fact that RedHat doesn't keep these intermediate versions around after the latest comes out is unfortunate, but the fact that they were there and all the good users got them is undeniable. As a bonus, if you had kept up with the 6.2 updates, you eventually would have gotten up2date, a splendid tool which takes care of updating your system semiautomatically... all you have to do is run it and keep clicking on 'Next'. Note that up2date shipped with all later versions of RH Linux.

If you're really feeling adventurous, a 6.2 user can grab the redhat-release package from 7.0, upgrade that one package, and up2date will think it's updating a very out-of-date Red Hat 7.0 system. It isn't quite automatic at that point, since there are things that disappeared from 6.2 to 7.0 and the replacements conflict with them, but barring that one drawback, it's as powerful as 'apt-get upgrade-dist'. (Actually, I would presume that that's the difference between 'apt-get upgrade' and 'apt-get upgrade-dist')

Also, IIRC, Red Hat 6.2 is a year and a half (or is it two years?) old. If a modern Windows system can tell you what updates are available automatically now, great, have fun, but don't say your distro of the week can't when your looking at an obsolete version. After all, I don't recall anyone's Win98 SE systems telling them there were updates available.

This is true,because most Linux users are arrogant

[Debillitatus]

Ok, I'm waiting for the flames. But I'm not trying to be flamebait here, I mean the title seriously.

I have used Linux, on and off, for the last 3-4 years. I've adminstered my own box, so I know a little. Now, I'm not a computer professional, and I know that there is a ton of stuff I don't know about Linux. For the record, I work in academia (I'm a faculty member of a very geek-dense university), and I've decided that for the kind of stuff I do, Linux is sometimes useful, sometimes not. One major, consistent, problem that I have had running Linux is that frequently, one must ask colleagues about how certain things work, how things are configured, etc. Most Linux "gurus" are, IMHO, arrogant about their knowledge, and not willing to explain, in reasonably simple terms, how something works. Look... because of my career path, I'm not inherently turned off by technical explanations, but when I ask a simple, straightforward question, and the answer is complicated and chock-full of jargon, it's a turn-off. I have even heard, on at least three separate occasions (involving three separate gurus) a "guru" tell someone who is trying to do something in Linux "Well, if you think it's too complicated, just use Windows." This attitude is, in my experience, much more the norm than the exception.

Now, of course, I know that there will be a bunch of people who don't agree that this is a common attitude, but I would wager that most of those people are people who are very well-versed, and heavily invested, in Linux. Of course you don't run into this attitude on a daily basis, simply because you're not having to ask experts questions which they feel are "beneath them".

Bottom line: Linux is, for even a technical person, way the hell harder to run "out of the box". It has some serious advantages, no question. But if you're a professional of some sort or another who needs computing, but doesn't really need to be able to hack the pull-down menus of your browser, M$ products are very attractive. And, in my experience, the situation is aggravated by the attitude of those with the knowledge.

Look, if I talked to my calculus students the way I've been talked to by Linux guys, I'd lose half my class. If all my colleagues did, the department would lose funding. Anyone trying to promote Linux in any way must consider these issues.

Re:Right ON! -- addendum

[Tachys]

That is because in Windows I almost never need to look in a manual

Re:i'm new

[Pinball Wizard]

Try reading this. Especially that part about running testparm to test your configuration.

Another very common newbie problem - samba uses unencrypted passwords by default. This only works with Windows 95 and possibly 98. Later versions of Windows encrypt their passwords so you won't be able to connect to your Samba shares. Run smbpasswd -a on your Linux boxes to fix this.

Also while you can access Windows machines from Linux using Samba, its default setup is to access Linux servers from Windows. You will need to learn about mounting Windows shares (try man mount) ala mount -t smbfs to access Windows shares in Linux.

Above all be patient. Unix is not for those who give up easily.

Re:100% agree

[Lumpy]

WRONG! you picked a wannabe or poser as your expert.

Newbie - "How do I use my dial up modem in linux, using redhat 7.2?"

realEXPERT - click on that configure dial up icon on your desktop and follow the instructions.

an expert knows what he/she is talking about your expert example was that of a poser trying to make someone think they know what they were talking about and obviously never touched Redhat 7.2 or 7.1 for that matter.

and that is a HUGE problem in linux. a ton of posers and very few real experts. Just like it is in the windows /mac/sun/everything else worlds.

Re:i'm new

[bsauls]

SWAT is a very nice point and grunt interface to Samba configuration. Follow the link "Global" and note each parameter has a "Help" link. Take a look at the documentation links too.

Assuming you are on the Linux box, access SWAT by pointing your web browser at http://localhost:901
and enter your root ID and password.

Have fun!

Re:Right ON! -- addendum

[waterbiscuit]

Firstly a quick explanation of who I am: I'm 17/f windows user with a linux-mad bf. I'd never even heard of linux or any other operating systems other than doze and macs before. As windows users go, I consider myself fairly competent, but of course not an expert. I know how to use software packages, I'm developing a strong hatred of MS products and I spend my life on irc. So basically I come from the standard home computer user environment.

Now as one who is just a normal computer user, I can say truthfully that I do not use help files at all- they have never sorted out the problem since they don't suggest anything that I haven't tried before. As far as manuals and documentation are concerned, I have consulted them occasionally if I specifically can't find a feature I want, but again as far as trouble shooting is concerned, they have never worked. Anything to do with hardware installation is a bit of an "ah scary get bf to do it" area. I did proudly install my modem though :)

So getting to the point, if we are trying to get users to move to linux, the very first thing is let them hear about it! Nobody has heard of it! I'm not just being extreme, but I hadn't heard of it, nobody at school has heard of it, my parents certainly have not heard of it, and in an A level IT text book (I don't do IT but I was curious so I looked) it gets one mention under the operating systems bit, whereas MS OSs gets several pages. Is it any wonder very few non-geeks uses it?

The stigma is not about linux being for geeks only. People love their computers, love having fancy desktops and something slightly different (such as using winamp rather than the windows media player). People start on MSN messenger then go to ICQ because it's different. So they are just waiting for a different operating system too, just they have not heard of it. Perhaps if it was offered pre-installed on computers like windows is then people might well opt for it.

There is however a huge fear about going non-MS. There is a huge fear about the installation, and whether anyone will be able to help them if things go wrong. Perhaps this is why I myself have not progressed to linux. My reasons would not be that I need it for coding, it's just that it's different, I like the idea of it being non-MS, and it just looks so cool! So perhaps I am your typical example of one who is considering linux but not actually making the step.

So my reasons for windows over linux? It's simply that I'm afraid of the transition, and of messing up my computer. The reasion I'm afraid is because I no nobody in real life (my bf is miles away) who can help me and actually come round and sort out my problems. So the problem isn't really the documentation as such- windows users never use it, it's the fact that should something go wrong there is nobody to help, only the internet, which whilst is very helpful, if you're not sure what the problem is at all, its virtually impossible to find help.