Slashdot Mirror
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."
To be fair , slackware isn't really the first choice as a desktop system but it is among the first choices for a backend server (I use it for such myself). With that in mind I'm not sure how to configure printers via a GUI is all that much use for most slackware users. I personally would be far more interested to see how to do it via the command line so you can configure the things via a dial up at 3 in the morning when things have gone pear shaped at work. Anyway , no doubt other people will have other opinions :)
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
If you ever feel especially masochistic, check out Linux From Scratch. It's essentially a walkthrough that takes you step-by-step through the process of compiling a fresh toolchain which you then use to compile all of the necessary applications needed to construct a basic Linux system. Once you're done, you will likely find the process rather fulfilling (in addition to all that new knowledge rattling around in your head).
try the google cache
If you don't learn from history,
then you are an idiot by definition.
--- Vadim Yasinovsky
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
PageTurner Reader: open-source e-reader for Android with cloudsync. http://pageturner-reader.org
Having been using Unix for 15 years it is hard for me to tell if Linux is there yet as I am not a naieve user, but the likes of Lindows and Lycoris seem to be very usable, as do distributions with slightly less of a naieve user focus such as SuSe and Mandrake (and RedHat was going in that direction to before the Enterprise/Fedora split). So things are going in the right direction at least.
What would be interesting is to see a proper survey of users of a variety of levels who have never previously used Linux and see how they react to the latest distros on the desktop.
IMO, these guides are useful for general Linux users who want a guide to various tools on their desktop.
Slackware users, on the other hand, tend to prefer a more terminal/console-centric view, so the usefulness of this guide to anyone using Slackware for, as I've usually seen it, a server of some kind [printer, file, FTP, web], would probably do better to read some other documentation.
Just my $0.25.
It's only an insult if it's not true.
It has recently been released and it has caused quite a stir for its ease of use despite being based on Debian. For me its the first GNOME since 1.4 that is better than KDE. I suggest you try it and you will see why Slackware is a minority and why thousands of user are switching to Ubuntu!
Ubuntu Linux
Wikipedia article.
I used to use Redhat/mandrake on the desktop. But then I discovered Slackware and started running it on my desktop. Its very good... but you need to know a bit about the internals before you can start using it. I like it because it doesnt try do everything for you and installing other things is easy. I think its also a good distro to start learning linux.
Oh, cmon! Be a little fair will, you?
The way I learned how Linux works, as in for real, was by using Slackware. I'll admit SuSe and Debian are way ahead in the ease-of-use department, but trying to tweak those distro's is something I find truly painfull. And it hides the inner workings so well, that moving to another distro means learning everything all over.
But to your piont, if you've read the configuration manual for slackware (yes, if you're truly clueless at something, you can resort to manuals), it's right there.
So even if the installer doesn't tell you, it's not like it's a big mysterious secret how to config X. And if you know it's called X and you want to run it... You probably know about XFree86Config?
Not Buzzword 2.0 compliant. Please speak english.