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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."
This is the Montessori method of teaching Linux. Brilliant. Maybe I can get some questions I've had answered, finally.
the major advances in civilization are processes which all but wreck the societies in which they occur - A.N. White
On the other hand, rather than pushing linux past a "tipping point," listening to newbies might lead to many of the aspects of the Microsoft/Mac models that many hard core PC users hate.
Not that I think this is a bad thing, but it's worth considering that if, for instance, standardarized application appearance/performance becomes more important, much of the speed and robustness of Linux may fall by the wayside.
1. An installation process as straightforward and simple as Windows
2. The device compatibility offered by Windows
3. The level of cooperation shared by Windows applications
4. The games available on Windows
5. The simplicity of changing system configurations offered by Windows
I wonder where the heck I can find an OS that does all that and more? Hmmm...
(This is not a bash on Linux. I use Linux and love Linux for doing SERIOUS WORK. Most of the world does not do SERIOUS WORK at home. Windows meets virtually every requirement a home user could have. To meet these requirements, Linux would have to effectively become Windows. I, personally, would never use that distro.)
Even uber-newbs like the differences they can see between Linux and other OS alternatives. What we need is something they can understand, while still maintaining the environment of speed and customization that we have all grown to love. Discovering new things should be up to the user, but for those who need their hands held, they have somewhere to go instead of resorting back to the monopoly.
Read the only personal Runyon page out there.
This kind of testing is exactly what needs to be done. Recently I took several seminars on useability engineering and useability testing, and I was amazed at how much better you can make a product after testing it. I suggest that if you do plan to add your input to the project that you incoiurage the user to think out loud and write down all the things they say. It's really enlightening to hear a user say something like, "I'm looking for a button to do XYZ." when you know that the feature he wants is in a menu right in front of him.
My only concern is that, quite frankly, I find that the first and most difficult hurdle for new users is installing linux. Many people have no clue what's inside of their machine, and more times than not you need to specify some odd bit of hardware during the setup process.
Heh, I should try this on my mother.
100% Crunchier
I don't consider myself a newbie by any stretch of the imagination, but the majority of the time I still can't make sense out of linux documentation.
I tried every night for two straight weeks (reading the docs, getting some great help from the standard linux forums, reading every samba tutorial I could find etc) to get Samba working on my home network before finally giving up on it (and hence linux altogether).
You can't really complain about newbies not reading the manual when the manual either just plain doesn't contain the information you need, or has wrong or out-of-date information in it.
BINGO!
... someone needs to start a project site to add GUI's for every single configurable thing that happens in linux.
Instead of jillions of faq's and forums
Next>Next>Finish is why Windows is 'winning'.
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.
If Linux is going to really revolutionize the industry, then useability needs to be at the forefront of its design. As a network administrator, I want to get calls from my users when stuff legitimately doesn't work. I don't want to get calls from users asking me to help them browse their filesystem, or figure out how to center and bold a title in OpenOffice.
-ted
Maybe if the manuals were better written and weren't the size of a phone book people would read them. I'm tired of assholes telling people RTFM as the responce to any question from a "newbie" Do any of you stop to think that they wouldn't be taking the time to ask the question if the information was easy to find or made since? By the way I help manage 7 servers, combination of solaris and linux, and I don't have the time or desire to RTFM. If you want Linux to be more wide spread have to be friendly to those who are just starting out.
no really.. the new O/C version isn't hard to install.. and it comes working outta the box.. even samba works outta the box..
it can resize NTFS partitions to make space for itself and has a clean simple interface..
personally the only thing keeping me from linux is an EASY SAMBA CONFIGURATOR..
i could care less about the expert options.. i wanna give the box a name.. join the NT domain (because i still need it) and then be able to login to the NT domain using NT authentication on the linux box.
and i want to do that on 150 desktops.
that's it.. that's all..
That's 50% of the reason I won't use Linux on my desktop. If I install it, I get one of two scenarios. 1- The screen res is at 640x480 and looks like crap 2- The screen res is at 1600x1200 and I can't read a single piece of text. When I try to change the resolution I either get the screen scrolling around on the monitor or I get a small square in the middle of the monitor. I've used Suse, Mandrake, Knoppix and Red Hat with varying degrees of success but my main complaint is that I don't have a drop down box that will let me adjust screen res, like I can in Windows. At least it's not as functional as the one in Windows. The other thing is Samba configuration. I may be crazy but file sharing on a Windows network should've been the EASIEST thing to configure in Linux. It's the only way that Linux will ever compete in the desktop market. I've been a computer tech for years and have used everything from the TI99/4a, a 286 running a proprietary OS called "8n1" over DOS, to my latest Windows XP machine. I dictate what my family uses as their OS (because I work on their computers for free) and if I can't configure it like they want it, how are they ever going to be able to do it? After working all day long, I don't have time to weed through hundreds of man pages, only to find out there are 10 apps that do what I need it to do, but none of them will do it without editing several files and recompiling. Also there needs to be a big red button in the center of the Linux screen that says - "I really screwed up bad, please set everything back to install defaults"
60 percent of the time, my comments are right everytime.
Anti-virus software and monthly security updates and bug patches.
The typical Windows user has become so adjusted to the idea of constant crashes, security holes, and bug fixes that they'll think Linux is somehow lacking if it doesn't provide them - constantly. After all, viruses are a normal part of computer operation, right?
And should you try to convince them otherwise, they won't believe you. I've actually heard pro-Windows CS students say, "Well, it's impossible for a computer system not to crash from time to time..."
Sometimes I think that Windows is Bill Gates' revenge against all those kids who used to make fun of him on the playground. He charges Joe "corporate-fool" Sixpack exorbitant amounts of money for the software equivalent of a Pinto - sweet revenge indeed!
The society for a thought-free internet welcomes you.
I don't know what boxed sets are like nowadays, but my first set came with a couple of simple (thin) books that explained how to do common tasks.
Sure this raises the cost for newcomers, but having a simple guide printed out along with the ISOs is a good idea.
I wonder if any of the places like cheapbytes will sell you a cheap ISO and cheaply printed out introduction to Linux - sounds like it'd be a match made in heaven.
(Although maybe new-comers to Linux aren't coming from the cheapbytes route at all - hard to say I guess).
Do we let undergraduates tell the professors what they need to know? Do we let middle schoolers decide on their curriculum? No?
The point being is this: newbies do not know what they need, anymore than the examples above, or the person buying a Dell running WinXP which comes with only 128Mb of RAM.
I'm tired of people trying to make linux something that it is fundamentally not. Linux is not designed to be an OS for the masses; it is designed to work. Breaking that paradigm will inevitably break the core of what Linux is.
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
Most of the /. 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.
I'd like to put this to the test. Are the http logs for Slashdot available? Can we see what platforms and what browsers people are using?
my first distro was just someone I knew made a copy and gave it to me. that was enough to get me installed, but not online with, but luckily I have multiple computers so I was able to go find out what I was missing and doing wrong. Second distro was a boxed redhat 7.2, that came with two good paperbacks that had *some* useful info, but if what they said didn't work when you tried it, then back to googling here and there and yonder. Since then I just buy shipped-cloned because I am on dialup, well, don't own a burner either, running FC2 now, but that's only because I can go look up whatever I am stumped with, but I also have a lot of patience and the backup computer that I know very well, my trusty old mac classic, can get me to the web to find info. If all I had was the one computer, no way would I still be running linux, and driving an hour round trip to go to the library is not an option. I guess you just really have to WANT to run linux is what I am saying, to make it worth your while. I never went through windows insecurity, so that wasn't a factor in getting me to switch, I switched because steve jobs priced me outta macs to be frank, not because I didn't like them or couldn't figure things out, on the contrary, I always found classic to be fairly easy to use with zero instructions beyond click here, it does it. I never understood using windows *on purpose* as in going out and actually paying for it, and I never even saw anything unixy before I tried linux.
/., although someone's mom might not like it....
Yes, printed out instructions that could be included with a clone copy for another buck or two would be a pretty nice addition. I find any of the built in information I have seen to not be of much use unfortunately, for one, it's hard to keep track of what you are doing when all of it is brand new, better to have a dead trees manual by your side while you try to make sense of what is on the screen in front of you, at least it keeps the clutter down and you can scribble some notes in your manual as you tweak stuff.
I still like my idea of a command/GUI real time mirror though. Or even take it further, to build up the mind/muscle-memory deal, you start the mirror program, it forces YOU to follow the example that is indicated and to type the command, almost like a typing tutor but to learn linux, while you are actually doing what you want to be doing, not what they want you to do.
Hmm a name for the GUI/console mirror tool... heh heh heh , perfect for
Command Line Interactive Training
Though you deserve kudos for actually using that software (and I agree with you wholeheartedly with regards to hypocritical Windows users), your anti-anything-linux rant is amusing and rather silly.
I run Windows XP Pro at home because I play games. However, I've run Red Hat 6.1, 7.1, and 8 on other machines, but have never found them to be terribly useful for personal uses. If I were to constantly have more than one machine, I would probably run Linux as well. I, however, do not have any qualms about running WinXP, especially because it *can* be a very stable and powerful OS.
Professionally, I've done my web developing in the past with perl on a Linux server. As the years went on, however, our company made the jump to Windows 2003 Server and .NET using C#. Though I am no fan of the "corporate bastard" that is Microsoft, production costs have lowered and development has become much more efficient since we made the switch. All biases aside, I have been relatively content to use a Microsoft product in this situation.
Free software is great, but is seldom intuitive enough for the masses. Linux, and the realm that surrounds it, is largely for those that enjoy and have the time to endlessly tweak their software. I have enormous respect for those kind of people, and I must admit that I've felt jealous of them and their coolness.
When you call everyone "IE-using scumsuckers" and "shitbags", you're as annoying as the very n00bs you taunt. At least Linux wannabes are open to software that they don't even use.
LegendMUD
Stop calling them newbies. It's to much of a deragatory name and tends to push people away. How about calling them beginners or something like that?
Because the problem is not the name, it's that it's used in a derogatory fashion. As soon as the new name becomes politically correct, the people who use "newbie" to belittle them will use the new name to belittle them. Changing the name will not stop people from being derogatory to whom it refers.
People's desire to believe they are right is much stronger than their desire to be right.
I don't know about you, but if I have problems installing something, I don't always RTFM either. For example: I tried many many times to get wine to work, and every time failed. It crashes, or can't find some config file, or just doesn't do anything at all. Why didn't I RTFM? Because it is BIG and I just don't want to waste all that time to figure out just what options I need to type into the darn config file. Instead, I just boot into Windows to play games. Much simpler, not wasted time, no strange crashes, and everything is supported, including my nVidia card. Another example: printing. My machine can not print right now because the printer is networked from a Windows machine and magicfilter crashes for some reason when used in the smbprint script. Could I debug it? Probably, but why waste time? If I need to print a letter, I can just boot into Windows and use Word to type it and print it. Much simpler than spending hours messing with unfamiliar code in gdb (don't you just _hate_ gdb? It's another example, by the way. It is simpler to just put some printfs into the code and recompile than to figure out why it suddenly loses all my symbols ["can't find class string as reported by C++ RTTI"]). So, as you can see, unless the failing program does something vital to me, it is much simpler to just boot into Windows for a while, do it, and then reboot again and go on living.
<img src="images/not-msie.png" alt=""
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And a quick grep grep of "not-msie.*MSIE" in the apache logs is quite enlightening.
455fe10422ca29c4933f95052b792ab2
I am a software engineer who's been using Solaris for about 8 years now and just recently switched to linux as a result of a job change. Much of the switch was painless enough, but there are a few differences between the two that needed sorting out, as well as using new software and doing sysadmin things that I previously had smart people paid to do for me.
My local linux guru happens to be a good friend of mine, and even when I come to him with seemingly intelligent questions, I get borderline hostile responses, suggesting to me I am an idiot/asshole/whatever for daring to waste his time with a question that I could've found the answer to myself.
Unfortunately, for someone of my intelligence and experience, "finding the answer for myself" usually means hours spent poring through manuals and FAQs and HOWTOs for the weird little behavioral quirk I'm looking to get answered. I dare not look into newsgroups and ask, for fear of even harsher treatment.
Most of the time, the people complaining about how idiotic newbies are, are often the same people wondering why linux hasn't taken over the world, established peace and harmony and cured cancer. Quite simply, it's not because people aren't curious about a free operating system and tons of free apps to do what people normally pay to do -- it doesn't take a sociologist or economist to realize that people will gladly do the same things they pay for, for free, given the chance. The problem is, they need to ask questions, and the best people to ask generally have enormous egos and a massive elitist streak.
RTFM/RTFFAQ is not without it's merits, but unfortunately many linux geeks use it as a simple, smarmy response to questions one can't reasonably be expected to know or discover for oneself. RTFM is meant to stop people from wasting time with common questions, but instead it's being used to stop otherwise interested people from pursuing linux further because those already steeped in it treat them like idiots. People like free software, but they don't like being insulted to get it.
One of the reasons Microsoft ascended to where it is now is not because they make high quality, stable, efficient, easy to use software. It's because they treat their customers like gold, help them with their problems happily, and treat even the most idiotic questions with empathy. Linux users looking to evangelize the movement should do likewise. Remember, you were there once too, not knowing how the hell to install patches or configure a Samba server or get your network running. Just because you have the knowledge doesn't make you a better person, unless you REALLY embrace the open source movement and make your knowledge as open source as the software.
B
"I'm payin' taxes, but what am I buyin'?" -- James Brown