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GrokDoc Goes Live; All GNU/Linux Newbies Welcome

Posted by Hemos on from the pushing-the-world-further-along dept.

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."

4 of 504 comments (clear)

  1. Listening to Newbies by wambaugh · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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. Re:Listening to Newbies by John+Hurliman · · Score: 5, Interesting

      I'm not pointing out the obvious to troll, but remember Linux is just a kernel. If one desktop team decides to make an Apple clone that sacrifices top performance for a common user interface (I don't see how that argument makes any sense at all, but I'll go with it), another team will step up to give you the bare bones written in optimized C and assembly. People have this vision of every Linux enthusiast on the planet except for themselves heading in one unified direction that isn't to their liking; I don't think you'll see that happen any time soon.

  2. What newbies need... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.)

  3. I Disagree by Seek_1 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.