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GrokDoc Goes Live; All GNU/Linux Newbies Welcome
An anonymous reader writes "Writing at LinuxWorld, Groklaw's PJ asks "What Do Newbies Need to Make the Switch to GNU/Linux? and invites the world - literally - to help with answering the question, by participating in the wiki she and some colleagues have just launched. GrokDoc aims to turn the usual process on its head: "Instead of experts telling newbies how to do things, we will let newbies show and tell us what they need." Might be a fantastic way to help push Linux still further toward that fabled tipping-point."
... that the entire /. community is a bunch of newbies?
/. community is a bunch of Windows users, running IE 6, who have thought about running Linux because they heard it was cool and/or they want to put it on their resume, but have yet to really do much other than boot up Knoppix once or twice.
.Net applications in Visual Studio .Net 2003, but they have thought about using Python.
Most of the
They mainly talk about how Windows sucks and the evils of Microsoft even though they are using nothing but Microsoft technologies. They also like to talk about how great free software is, but can't even bother to try out Mozilla because they heard it takes longer to load up than IE. The people who call themselves developers are writing
Mod me down all you want, you IE-using scumsucker, you know its true.
For the record, I am not one of these shitbags. I run Debian Linux, use a Gnome desktop, and use Emacs for coding. I use nothing but free software. You fools on Windows and OS X can suck my ass.
If you liked licking my balls, add me to your foes list!
You can do far worse than pointing people at The Linux Cookbook.
This is something that is task orientated which seems to make lots of newcomers to Linux (but not computers)
I've gone through a few different distros the past year, and I must say that so far, the Gentoo handbook is the best manual for linux I've ever read. They show you exactly what to type, and where, as well as telling you WHY you're typing it. I learned a lot about linux simply by installing and troubleshooting Gentoo.
Nope. RTFA.
Basicaly, Experienced Linux users sit a complete noob down and watch what they do.
Imagine sitting your mother/girlfriend/neighbor down at your Linux box then record what she does to get online. Maybe she has trouble navigating the menus. Maybe there is problem just logging in. Is there any problems using the broser itself? Which web browser was chosen?
There are more complex tasks like setting up the computer for internet access. Also one can see how well they can handle finding and reading existing documentation.
After all this documentation is collected, then the community can design better interfaces and write better documentation.
Just a Tuna in the Sea of Life
Too bad more beginners don't know about it:
Linux Learner's Guide (PDF)
-JemAnother great place for linux newbie help, http://www.linuxquestions.org/ complete with forums and Wiki!
Even a stopped clock gives the right time twice a day.
Recently, when my hard drive borked, I had to resort to using Knoppix to check my email, et cetera while waiting for the spare time to get things working again.
With a Knoppix CD, I could:
Now this was incredibly usable to me since I am familiar with Linux in the first place. There are only a few places where things fall apart.
I think that the Harmony Remote concept would be useful for Linux Configuration. For those too lazy to Google for it, the concept is this:
90% of everything is crap. Also, crap is relative.
Constant crashes? Can you PLEASE put that old-ass dig to bed. XP doesn't crash. I've not had a crash on my PCs for months and months and months. I mean seriously - it harms the linux community when people, supposedly IT-savvy, keep banging on about crashing when it just isn't true any more.
For interested parties, it's PBCAK, not PEBKAC. It stands for "Problem between chair and keyboard." (It mean's user error.)
I take back what I said, I hadn't noticed at first by Grokdoc and LQ.w have different aims and, anyway, both websites have the same webmaster.
Treehugger? Treehugger... Treehugger!
Slightly better GUI design for config windows would help a great deal. What we need:
- make the damn windows resizable already! Especially if you want to put in a three-line selection box with 3000+ items! (this is of course a point mostly aimed at Windows).
- Do NOT use tabs, *especially* if you need more than one row of them. Instead, use a Mozilla-style category list on the left side of the window. That allows you to group together related 'tabs', and use longer (and more descriptive) names.
- Group options together in a logical fashion. Disable controls that are made irrelevant by other choices.
- Provide a fscking help option for EVERYTHING, describing the finer nuances of setting or unsetting that option. Don't write "LPGR: sets the LPGR option". Describe what it is, why I want it, what happens if I set it and what happens if I do not set it. If a value is a string, provide examples and full BNF syntax.
- Do NOT use acronyms or abbreviations unless you are REALLY certain they are common words. And even then it is probably better not to.
- Never invert the meaning of a checkbox. Checkboxes ENABLE things. If you check them something should be turned ON, not OFF. "Disable debugging" is incorrect. "Enable debugging" (with inverted state) is. If you do it right you will find you can drop the "enable" without losing meaning.
- While I'm on the subject anyway, checkboxes are for on/off choices. There are plenty of things that masquerade like on/off choices but really aren't (for example, the choice between 22KHz and 44KHz sound has only two options but a checkbox is utterly inappropriate since 22KHz is not the logical opposite of 44KHz even if your application only has those two options). Use radiobuttons or a combobox for those, even if there are only two options.
- Do not hide options behind three layers of windows, tabs, subwindows, and more tabs. You are allowed one layer only. It is provided by the navigation choices in the left-hand column. This allows any user to navigate to his option of choice in ONE click.
- Remember the last location of the user. Select it for him, next time he opens the configuration window. This will probably save another click.
And most importantly, there is this:
- Work with your own software. Try to _feel_ what is annoying; what works, and what doesn't. If some task is unpleasant to accomplish, redesign the GUI so it is no longer a problem.
I wholehartedly agree with you 100% here.
Funny thing is that Gentoo's documentation has been criticized by the 'hardcore' linux community.
It's consistent, it's up to date, and most of all, it's really easy to read. Like the parent mentioned, you really do learn a lot when reading it.
Gentoo is without a dobut one of the most complicated of the distros. Consequently, it is one of the most difficult to use, and even long-time linux users will need to refer to the documentation.
As a result, the documentation was under a lot of scruitny, and the Gentoo community saw that it needed to be improved and worked on. As a result, the hardest distro to use has the easiest documentation.
Honestly, I'd wager that because of the excellent documentation, Gentoo is one of the best/easiest linux distros.
I should note that Gentoo's DIY approach is NOT fit for the masses. Even with the excellent documentation, most users will be frightened out of partitioning their drives manually with fdisk.
Even so, when I have to use linux, I go to gentoo. It's nice that it's fast. The community is excellent, and without a dobut, has the best documentation. If you have a problem, IT WILL BE solved by either the documentation or (as a last resort), the forums (which are also the best among the linux community.)
That being said, Gentoo's far from perfect. As a distro, it's excellent. But it's still Linux, and still has all of its flaws. (Why oh why can't they ditch the standard driectory structure?).
For now, I'm using OS X. It's fine for my needs, and largely self-eplanitory. The official documentation, however, is way below par. Microsoft's knowledge base (though highly redundant and bloated) beats out Apple's.
-- If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done? - Uli's moose
I agree with that. At the time I installed Gentoo, a lot of UNIX commands were still abracadabra to me. Still, I managed to get Gentoo up and running without a hitch, and learned a lot in the process. What this means is that Gentoo, typically considered for advanced users, is a good way to kickstart newbies.
I really think that, in general, one of the best ways to learn about computers (any part of hardware and software) is by diving into it at the deepest level with a good walktrough. This not only teaches you how to do things, but also why you do them that way. With strong knowledge of the low level, it is easy to come up with any solution for the high level.
Of course, the _quickest_ way to learn how to use a computer is to learn just the things you need to use. However, do not confuse this with the easiest way. For example, there is a widespread belief that GUIs are more intuitive, and therefore easier to use than the command line. I disagree. I can hardly think of anything more intuitive than pressing the key which has the character that you want on the screen. From there on, you build up the complexity until you have a command that does what you want done, and press the key that causes the command to be executed.
In a GUI, one typically moves the mouse (in a different plane!), to the location where an action is to be performed, then does one of clicking, right clicking, holding a key and clicking, double clicking, etc. Often, the command to be performed is selected from a menu, which sometimes appears in a completely different location from where the action is performed. Intuitive?
The strength of GUIs is that they are discoverable. Once you learn how to move the mouse, select items, and navigate menus, you can discover pretty much everything a program can do by doing just that. There is a lesson here for CLI designers: make your interfaces discoverable. Tell the user how to get a list of commands and how to find out what they do.
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
Actually, it sounds more like wiki.linuxquestions.org, which I've contributed to from time to time.
Yeah, this does sound like it's reinventing the wheel.
You want the truthiness? You can't handle the truthiness!
And anyways, why are you messing with the smb.conf file or SWAT?? use the mandrake config tools and call it done. Too many newbies are being directed at advanced distros like gentoo and Debian and Slackware.... Give them the easiest for anyone to use, Mandrake 10.0 and soon to be even easier SuSE.
That's exactly my point (sorry for the SWAT reference, being predominantly Slackware myself, I don't really know what's out there).
But what's really needed is for people to be sent to the right tool for the job for them, as in, not the right tool for the job for joe h4x0r.
If home users can use linux without having to become a sysadmin, or have one tell them how useless they are, then the biggest problem with Linux on the desktop is dealt with.
It isn't even a technical problem any more, the solutions exist, we just need to point them to them.
P.S: Too all those who are complaining about an easy to use distro being just another Windows, may I remind you that what runs on one distro will run on another, and the bigger the market share, the more lickley we are to get the hardware support/games/Tax applications that everyone here is calling for.
Ask 8 slackers a question, get 10 awnsers (a citation, but I can't remember from who)
You did not even read this documentation that you are claiming is no good.
You also did not look for it very hard.
Let's see...
Now, have a look at that documentation, then come back and tell me that it sucks and why, or tell me that it doesn't but that you just couldn't find it, or tell me that you were really just not looking that hard.
-Mark
If you want at least somehow reliable stats, you have to rely on something more robust, eg. passive TCP fingerprinting; a good tool for this purpose is eg. p0f.
"Please! Love or hate microsoft, you can thank Bill Gates and company for making computers accessible to everyone. Without the sea change that was microsoft, most tech guys here would not have jobs - why you ask? Because there would be a lot less computers used by a lot less people."
Nice re-write of history to match your fantasy. Bill Gates and company didn't make computers accessible to everyone. Bill Gates and company opportunistically snatched a dirty clone of Gary Kildall's operating system after selling IBM something Bill Gates and company didn't have.
There was no "sea change that was microsoft" except for the change from collaborative computing to antagonistic computing, from a model following the scientific method of progress to a model of greed. Bill Gates and company have been holding computing back for twenty years. Evidence in the real world? Linux.
By the time Linux was 7 years old, it was already the number one threat to MS. (I'm sure you can search Google for those terms. Hint: Ballmer is the one who proclaimed the threat). MS had how many years by 1998? Yet the "upstart", using collaboration instead of secrecy, with enlightened self-interest to motivate instead of greed, and using a license that protects the USER instead of enslaving the user as a revenue generation unit, overtook Microsoft. They've been falling behind the penguin ever since.
I note while reading the comments that much of the whining against Linux and much of the promotion of MS comes right out of the CDs, handbooks and publications MS put out beginning in 1998 about how to deal with Linux. It's time to read Bill's memos at opensource.org/halloween and give up on the FUD. It doesn't work.
Business is waking up to the fact that it needs Linux. They are stampeding away from the ever-tightening cage that MS is attempting to lock around them. Microsoft's desperate rush to patent, while the USPTO is still rubber-stamping everything, will not be sufficient to stop the stampede.
Individuals have discovered that there are distributors of Linux who work very hard to make things easy. People are fed up with the continuous, expensive, damaging, time-consuming reminders of the low quality of MS products, which reminders come in the form of service packs that break existing "applications", viruses that eat data, exploits that allow MS "extensions" to standard HTML to hijack and control their computers. People are fed up with MS telling them they must not do this or that, with the threat of U.S. Marshals and the BSA kicking down doors. People are fed up with the increasing invasion of their privacy in return for the privilege of paying ever higher subscription fees for software that provides more functions for exploiters than those who pay the rental.
Linux works. Linux is easy enough for kindergartners to use, now. Linux has already revolutionized the industry. Linux sets individuals, businesses, governments and schools free from the illegally obtained, maintained and extended monopoly's choke-holds and its unwanted and unwarranted intrusions. Linux lets you own your computer, instead of being 0wn3d.
The best help system I have ever used is in VMS. You simply type 'help' at the command prompt (how novel) and you are presented with a list of options. You continue to drill down through the list until you get the information you want, examples, subcommands, everything you could want.
It's worth trying to find a VMS box to log on to just so you can see how documentation should be done, it makes man pages look like the confusing mess that they are.
I want to use these Mod points but I can't find anything Interesting, Informative or Insightful on Slashdot.