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The Stealth Desktop Part III
uninet writes "In the third installment of the Stealth Desktop series about Slackware Linux, Eduardo Sánchez builds upon the previous steps of Part I and Part II. Continuing where those parts left off, he introduces the subjects of user, font and printer management in Slackware using KDE."
Not talking about slaskware as the distro, or the server distro, but like linspire, and perhaps SuSE, they are aiming at really easy to run and user experience oriented linux.
The article picks up on some great standard management applications, KUser and font installer, the whoel article reads like a PCPro article about windows 98 through XP - and many people read those articles and glean new ways to use thier OS.
even the printer installation looks scarey, but upon reading I can imagine a newbie person running this command, setting it up, seeing the results, and then using the fairly friendly dialogues to complete the tasks.
Figure 18 I had to check they weren't comparing with windows way of doing things.
I have to say, linux has crept from being 'will it ever be ready for the desktop' to 'which distro will desktop people pick'
I recommend you let some of your friends read this and see how easy it all is.
#hostfile 0.0.0.0 primidi.com 0.0.0.0 www.primidi.com 0.0.0.0 radio.weblogs.com
"Why would you say Slackware isn't really the first choice as a desktop system? "
Simply because its tricky to set up for your average user. Slackware gives you little hand holding and someone whos used to putting in even a redhat CD and just cliking a few buttons with be thrown by Slakcware. I'm not say thats bad (I myself prefer knowing whats happening in the install) but for someone who just wants to use office apps its a bit daunting.
Printers in Linux have been a horrible experience for me
I share this sentiment. Then again, printers are finicky devices anyway, no matter what OS one uses to invoke them.
Why the hell is everyone assuming desktop == average user - not everyone who needs a desktop has no clue about how computers work... ...)
i use my current slack install as a desktop for ~2 years now (no reinstall, simple upgrading - currently sports kernel 2.6.7 + kde 3.3) and it's the snappiest desktop linux i ever experienced (in my opinion faster than gentoo, suse, fedora
I always found that Slackware had the best handholding.... Its just in a different place. /etc/rc.d directory.
Its not hidding the inner workings in nice GUI interfaces.. It has nicely commented config and startup files and a clear
Jeroen
Secure messaging: http://quickmsg.vreeken.net/
OK, I'll feed this troll...
;-)
Slackware is not, and was never meant to be a migration path for Joe Sixpack coming from Windows. We have loads of distros that handle that task a million times better.
What Slackware is great for is people who like a simple, clean UNIX-like OS on their home machine, and don't want to bother with all sorts of distro-specific tools. It's also great if you prefer to compile your software from source, without having to be afraid to mess up you package management DB. Using Linux is much like riding a bike: try it with training wheels first, move on when you're ready.
Finally, if we really want to get grandma's, sisters and Joe Sixpack off of Windows, we should probably start promoting KDE as the "OS". It's what they see anyway, and it shouldn't really matter if it runs on top of Linux, BSD, Solaris, whatever...
OK, done ranting now... feel so much better
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Slackware is not, and was never meant to be a migration path for Joe Sixpack coming from Windows. We have loads of distros that handle that task a million times better.
I think this jives with the main gripe of the original anon poster. People need to stop recommending this distro to Joe-windows user as a good distro to try. Personally, I agree with him. People also shouldn't recommend debian to windows guys either, because then they go get Debian stable, which is 2 years old, and then we have to listen to them whine, bitch, and moan about their god damned font problems. And one more: I haven't seen this one often, but I have seen it and I want to beat the living crap out of everyone I see do this, Gentoo is not a distro for windows guys to try out, unless your point is to convince them that Linux is the biggest pain in the ass on earth.
I've got nothing against slakware(not really for it though), and nothing at all against Debian and Gentoo(2 of my favorite distros personally), but when windows people want to try a distro, none of these 3 are ones that should be mentioned in general.
And don't go saying "what if they're some kind of elite nerd guy". Face it, every windows user who can install his video drivers and play doom3 at high resolution thinks he's a fucking elite geek.
Suse, maybe RedHat, Lycoris, and many other Linux distros are far better choices for these people. If they are truly hard core geeks, all these distros will whet their appetites for more "hardcore" distro's. Start from the easiest, and let them work their way down. Anyone who does not follow this rule is hampering Linux adoption and that's the way it is. That's the end of my rant.
Although there are many important differences between different distros, aside from some configuration utilities, (which make a large difference to unfamiliar people), they all offer the same software written by someone else and hope that they have compiled it correctly and have it running stabley. GNU/Linux is all about the same whichever flavor you like it.
In my experience, most average Windows users struggle to set up their machines. I find the long flame-wars about ease-of-install for non-techies to be mostly irrelevant, as a techie will be setting up pretty much any system. ... techie sets it up , off you go.
For "someone who just wants to use Office Apps", it is the simplest thing
It is the people who wish to constantly change things that might have trouble.
b3 4phr41d 0f my 4bov3-4v3r4g3 c0mpu73r kn0wI3dg3!
MadDwarf
"Finally, if we really want to get grandma's, sisters and Joe Sixpack off of Windows, we should probably start promoting KDE as the "OS". It's what they see anyway, and it shouldn't really matter if it runs on top of Linux, BSD, Solaris, whatever..."
... but i agree with your point. To Joe 6-pack, the "OS" is what they see, the user-interface. They don't care whether it is Linux, Windows, or Babbages Difference Engine runing the show, so long as they can play Quake, browse the web and send jokes to everyone on their e-mail lists.
Not sure we should start refering to KDE as an OS
b3 4phr41d 0f my 4bov3-4v3r4g3 c0mpu73r kn0wI3dg3!
MadDwarf
Any real Linux user should create an LFS system at least once. I found it a usefull and educational process, and it gretaly helped me to understand things that were previously somewhat mysterious, like the boot process.
It only takes one afternoon with a decent machine to get a basic booting system, another on top of that to have a full X session with most desktop goodies.
Once I was at this point, I really only used the system for a few days before installing Gentoo again (maintainging all those apps yourself with no packaging system is a pain), but I still don't consider it a waste of time.
Try it out!
the "Desktop User" doesn't even have a clue where the control panel is in windows 8 times out of 10.
anyway, there is a yast equivalent (a few actually, using the same backend): there's gnome-terminal for gnome, konsole (very pretty), xterm, rxvt, etc. And there's always just bash.
but seriously, no - get somebody to install slackware for you (desktop user) and just leave it - its as solid as a rock (i like to play with mine alot, which is nice, because slackware seems logical to me)