Slashdot Mirror
Moving To Linux
Since the book comes with Knoppix and the author's purpose is to introduce the Linux desktop immediately, the first few chapters of this book only briefly describe what Linux versions are available, how to get a copy and how to install your chosen distro. Gagne gives some example installation choices with Mandrake, Redhat and SuSE. The next two chapters deal with using and customizing the author's desktop environment of choice (KDE) and exploring with Konquerer.
Chapter 7 provides a "release-agnostic" approach to package installation with examples and screen shots from Kpackage, RPM installs via shell and building from source. Most readers will become quite familiar with Chapter 8: Working with Devices, despite the author's exclamation that "Device support under Linux is excellent. No, really." Printing looms large in this chapter and there's some good advice to be had here for the newbie. The next several chapters tackle getting connected to the Internet, email and using Konquerer and Mozilla. In short, mainstream user necessities. Mandrake, RedHat, SuSE, and Ximian are all represented in the chapter on system updates along with a pitch to get involved in the Linux community (this is a good thing).
The make-or-break chapters for those readers requiring office productivity solutions come near the half point of the book. Gagne gives an overview of OpenOffice.org's suite of MS Office counterparts. These are really meant as introductory lessons on migrating from the more familiar, more ubiquitous MS suite of applications and not intended as an in-depth look at OpenOffice.org. Here is where the user will judge whether Linux is a viable alternative to Windows. Productivity is essential. Can you create a document that can be shared in a Windows dominant world? Can you do it without struggling to learn new rules and exceptions to the rules? Gagne makes a strong pitch for ease of use in the Linux world.
The final chapters on multimedia and games round out the topics that every semi-literate computer user has on their "must know how to" list. Under multimedia, KsCD, XMMS and Noatun are covered, including visualization plugins and skins. K3b, Grip and MPlayer are also described. Favorite Linux games are represented: KSirtet, KAsteroids, Frozen-Bubble, KBattleship, KPatience, KPoker ... well, you get the idea!
Care has been taken in laying out the book; from the beautiful typography, the boxed asides with Quick Tips, Shell Outs and Notes to the Resources list at the end of each chapter. The book is easy to read and the author has a crisp conversational style of writing devoid of distracting anecdotes or sophomoric humor (chapter subheadings aside!). Gagne succeeds in providing a guidebook to Linux that should enable the average Windows users to make a smooth transition to a Linux distro of their choice. At the very least, Gagne gives the nervous Windows-to-Linux wannabe an excellent bootable Knoppix CD to test drive while following along in the book. I wouldn't hesitate to recommend this book to someone who is looking to give Linux a spin but is afraid to commit their working PC to Linux entirely. This book and the accompanying CD will ease the way toward independence from Windows.
You can purchase Moving to Linux: Kiss the Blue Screen of Death Goodbye! from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews. To see your own review here, carefully read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
Used Knoppix lately?
Found all my hardware quite easily...
I ran Knoppix 3.3 and the newest 3.4 on Dells cheapest laptop. Inspiron 1100, Everything detected perfectly and runs great. Even the Netgear wireless NIC. Knoppix is good at even the cheapest hardware. As long as its common, thats what they shoot for. Ease of use.
Heres a good site for Linux on the Inspiron 1100.
http://www.geocities.com/randomnumbergenerator2001 /
Yes, games and multimedia are just so important to me when I begin learning a new OS! Not to mention specific examples of Linux games that I have never heard of and certainly wouldn't play. This right here ends the "importance" of this book for me and should also end it for everyone else.
1) You are not the intended audience of this book.
2) You are right, multimedia is of no interest whatsoever to the average user. I mean, who ever heard of playing music on their computer? Next you'll be trying to convince me that there is a compressed audio standard that is listened to by millions of users everyday...... For the average user, multimedia is one of the most important issues.
I went to barnes and noble to look at some books about linux, I always have problems with installing programs and stuff, and i read quite a few "newbie" books about linux, but i keep running in to problems
it seems like a good book, but for a non-geek, try linux for non-geeks
Same here. I (as linux user with some experience) had great help from "Linux for Non-Geeks: clear-eyed answers for pratical consumers" by Rodwriter (isbn: 0-9726867-0-3). Great book for newbies, shipped with Knoppix and had lots of chapters on word-processing.
The perfect help for a secretary to switch to linux.
"It wasn't me, I didn't do it, I don't post, the bite marks still haven't healed from last time." Ryan/jrc
Actually, if you go by "the fewer books, the easier the OS" logic, I'd say MacOS is the hands-down winner. With a larger desktop share than Linux, there are far more Linux books that Mac books in any general or technical bookstore that I've ever seen. Back in the days of Classic MacOS, you'd be hard pressed to find even a single Mac book in a lot of stores.
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
The only reason I have to use Windows at work is that all our mail/contacts/schedule is in Lotus Notes and I could not find a client for Linux (weird if you think on IBM's commitment to Linux).
Using wine is so painfully slow that is not a solution.
PENAROL: Seras eterno como el tiempo y floreceras en cada primavera.
Hmm. I've seen maybe two or three on my game box since I installed XP Home on it last November. To be fair, that's about the same number of kernel panics I saw in the same timeframe back on the first release of Linux kernel 2.2. I've never had a BSD crash, but I haven't used it as heavily (yet) either.
Microsoft will always be dogged by the fact that Win95, 98, and ME were all tepid pieces of dog crap when it came to stability. XP and 2003 will always suffer from the thousands of curses that the last generation of PC users slung at their boxes when all their work flashed into the blue and white puddle of puke that meant windows totally fucked something up.
Fair? Probably not. But, that's just the way it goes.
As far as Linux, I'd fear switching from the BSOD to the nightmare that is the X system and tepid pieces of dog shit that are KDE and Gnome. If Linux wants to play the part of the friendly desktop distro that can compete with a Windows Home system, it needs a good window management system. KDE and Gnome are definitley NOT up to filling those shoes. When they are, I'll reccommend Linux over Windows to the "normal" people. Until then, I'll continue recommending CLI and lite window managed BSD boxes for the server, and Windows for the desktop (or, OSX if you've got the cash).
Alito: A vote for Alito is a punch in the eye to put that bitch back in her place!
I might say that Knoppix is an exception!
I have a strange mismash of 7 systems at my house; everything from a Pentium-233 to 2.4 GHz P4 with everything from VIA built-in sound to a SoundBlaster Live! Network cards include no-name 8139, SMC, SMC wireless 2602 and VIA built-in 10/100. Graphics range from ATI Rage to ATI 9800 to nVidia (3 flavors) to savage S3 built-in to MB.
Without exception, Knoppix came up perfectly with enough hardware support on each to work first time. I've also tried it with similar success on 3 systems at work (all Dells but multiple flavors) There's a damned good chance it will work on your hardware!
There is a very interesging article about teaching complete newbies a command line interface before a GUI. They found that people understand more in less time. A couple of reasons for this is that they aren't required to multi-task (only one thing happens at once) and it is easier to explain what is happening using simpler analagies.
Once the users undertand the basics of what they are doing it is a lot easier to move to a GUI which is more cluttered with multiple ways of achieving the same goal.