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The Linux Newbie Replies: WFM?
Thanks to Sensei^ for sending us a
link to a piece about dealing with new Linux users. Given the gigantic growth of Linux over the last year, this is an issue within the community: How do we deal with this influx of population? Everyone recognizes the need for more documentation, but what's the best way to do it? If you've got an opinion about the whole schmeal, click below and add to the conversation.
A whole spate of web-archaeology articles, right at the end of the 1900s...
Eric
What the linux community needs is for a group of gurus to get together with one of those ever-popular journalism majors and create a light-weight web site (as in low color graphics) that provide examples of everything anyone would ever need to run linux. The site should start out with teaching the basics of the terminal, then go on to examples of X and the a few window managers, and continue with advanced terminal use. It shouldnt be more than 150 pages long or so, and it should also provide info on how to use man pages to gain even more info.
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There was never a genius without a tincture of madness.
There are a number of ways of dealing with newbies, some good, some bad, but they all leave an impression on the new user. That is important to remember, first impressions mean a lot. One of the less preferable ways is to simply tell the newbie to RTFM. A better way is to guide them to helpful information.
Here's what I do.
If I am the one that introduced the Newbie to linux, I show them how to find information, and how to use the system up to the point that they can find things on their own. Not that they nessessarily will have everything that they need, but hopefully with the information (meta-information?) to find what they need to know.
If someone else introduced them to linux, then I do what I can, and try to help. *smiles*
Playing the Tech-Support game is not enjoyable, but molding a new convert into a successful linux user is. *grins*
--
http://gabrielcain.com/
It has been my experience that whenever I refer someone with questions to a manual, help file, man page, or HOWTO, they always come back with questions. I know it isn't a deficient manual, because usually the questions haven't changed.
I think our 'instant availability' society is the cause. They know I can give then a simplified, concise answer in seconds, while referring to the manual may cut into their coffee break and actually require them learning something! They may flip through the manual, perhaps looking at the index and actually finding that the manual has relevent information. But they never seem to read it.
Society sucks.
.sig: Now legally binding!
Of course, this is technically currently illegal, which is why we should press for legislation changes in 2000 which would allow us to club new users in the name of evolution without fearing prosecution.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Why is it such a big deal? HOWTOs are pretty complete and irc , last time I checked, was helpful (ok, there are lamers on #linux* that yell and send to RTFM, but overall help can be found on irc). Mailing lists work (debian ones, at least. Dunno about others). Besides, we all started out somewhere, with less documentation, and managed to get it all working, didnt we? If a windoze user is looking to be "cool Linux guy", but can't answer "How much ram your system has?" question, they don't deserve to use a computer, let alone Linux. *puts on asbestos suit* Andrew
I hope I remember to treat Linux newbies better than I treated AOL newbies when AOL opened the floodgates. :)
Do really dense people warp space more than others?
Everyone (here) loves linux, it powerful, you can do whatever it is that you want, but please don't make me have to explain it to my mother-in-law.
But to take that next big step, someone will need to be able to explain it to good old Mom, and a lot of other people who are even more scared of the machine than she is. God bless the poor soles who are on the front line trying to spread the word of linux, because it is a thankless job that needs to be done.
all persons, living and dead, are purely coincidental. - Kurt Vonnegut
In working at an ISP here in Cleveland and having made many How-To web pages, I must say that pictures are very essential to documentation, and linux howto's do not have enough of them.
Although many of the text-based unix commands seem to have no need for pictures, even having them pictured would make things easier, so that a newbie would know where to type a command and when.
And then for the graphical interfaces that the newbie will want to see, there should be a LOT more pictures. Just seeing a page full of words is very discouraging, which is why I still hate man pages. I'd rather read 50 pages with pictures around all over the place than 10 pages of pure text. And many others agree. Pictures lighten up documentation.
- Mike Roberto
-- roberto@apk.net
--- AOL IM: MicroBerto
Berto
that first they must refer the operating system in that disgusting and wrong way that I refuse to repeat here.
Then, they must bow down before him, join every boycott that he joins, and generally just agree with everything that he says.
If you do that and follow him 100%, Slashdotters will comend you for thinking independently (go figure).
One thing that might be helpful is a sort of comparison between Win/Mac concepts and terminology to the Unix-style equivalents..
Et al, an explanation of the divisions between Kernel/Shell/X11/Window Manager/Desktop Environment and the Windows environment... Where to find how to change common system settings... What Linux/BSD is good at and what it is NOT good for.. [!]
The most killer thing for newbies seems to be understanding partitions, setting up X, setting up the mountpoints, 'startx', and understanding common commands like ls, rm, mv, cat, et al...
I dunno. All I do know is that a lot of computing enthusiasts hear all sorts of great things about Linux/BSD, hit a snag or ten, and dance right back into Windows, probably never to leave again. Perhaps a real-world document on how to get comfortable in a unix environment quickly would be helpful.
-troll taker
I'm relatively a linux newbie myself, only having had exposure to it for the past year and a half or so. I took a crash-course so I could secure up my DSL firewall though, so now, among people I know, I'm an 'expert'.
:)
This makes me a prime target for EVERYONE to ask me 'how do you do this' or 'how do you configure that'. Now, I don't mind doling out advice occasionally, but at one point I had this certain individual coming to me DAILY with problems he had. I'd patiently hold his hand and pat him on the back until he got the issue fixed...however for even the MOST serene person this can get bothersome.
What I'd personally like to see is more of the newbies RTFM'ing instead of instantly throwing up their hands in exasperation when they can't get the 3dfx.lib RPM to install without the dependencies. I usually troll the newsgroups (alt.linux.*) for information before I go and post, or hit the LDP. And I did this when I was a newbie, too.
Newbie-ism isn't bad, but they need to learn that learning isn't something they can grok from the resident expert ALL of the time. Do some research, LEARN it yourself insead of having someone else do it for you - otherwise you'll never really figure it out, and those of us in the know will eventually get tired of you, and you'll go back to windows.
(sorry for my lapse back and forth into talking 1st/3rd person.
der dee der.
The most usefull tool to veteran UNIX users are probably the ever-present man pages. (Ok, so I once set up a system without them, but that is the exception not the rule) Man pages are complete, concise, and way to technical for most linux newbies to read. However if some brave soul would remake all the man pages to an extent that they would be understood by most newbies, and make a nice little index, I beleive that the newbies wanted to read the manuals themselfs could.
c . help BEFORE they attempt to read any documentation. The only thing that some people will accept is one-on-one walktrhoughs. Others will read documentatin, but only if it is physicaly printed on the pressed pulp of dead trees. These people should go out right now and buy a copy of LINUX FOR DUMMIES, or even better if somewhat redundant REDHAT LINUX FOR DUMMIES.
/. effect had already cripled the site to the point that it wouldn't load on my computer. So if I'm totaly off topic here, you have only yourselves to blame.
Nothing however will repress the newbies who try to get phone/IRC/YahooChat/email/personal/Psychiatric/et
On a side note, I did not read the article in question. The
Little Brother, watching the watchers
Look at the average man page -- I'd be scared if I were a newbie. Even the HOWTOs are frightening. What we need is the sort of online docs that Microsoft uses -- a "press this. Did this happen?" type of thing to walk through some really basic problems.
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Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
- Ban anyone who can't learn Linux on their own from using a computer
;-) - Stop being lazy and document everything we can(don't assume that someone else will, ie, if you got QuakeIII running in Linux under Graphics Card X that is not formally supported, post it somewhere on the web. don't keep quiet).
- Split linux into two types of linux-that for people who can't program their vcr, and that for those who can(or some other attempt at a divider).
- most of all, HELP YOUR FRIENDS LEARN IT. If you keep telling them to check it out but don't give them a hand...they won't get very far if they have been brought up on dir, ctrl+alt+delete, and internet explorer, not to mention they won't ever figure out that you have to unmount a floppy to remove it(get involved!).
Of course, these options are pretty blatant, but if we get our wish and microsoft dies horribly or something, then we might have to decide.If Linux is to become as popular and widespread as we want it to, we need to spread the word ourselves. If my friends had not taught me about
Two years later I delved into Linux and have been using it for a year and a half.
Although Linux has an extensive set of documentation and I wasn't a novice to Unix by then, I still found FreeBSD easier to learn even though I was virtually new to Unix.
I found that the documentation for FreeBSD was organised very much like a manual which was great to start with as I could work through it as I installed a system. The topics were also general such as 'disks', 'backups', 'serial communications' and it was easy to quickly find what you needed.
The Linux docs are organised by a specific 'need' and while it is great when you are after a solution to a specific problem, it is too unstructured for a newbie.
A newbie needs to be lead through the topics in a general fashion so that they can gain an overall picture - Linux docs don't really give a good overview.
It's 5am so I'm not very coherent at the moment - so i apologise if my opinion isn't very clear. I can't really give specifics (at least I can't think of specifics at the moment), but that is my general feeling about what makes Linux that little bit more difficult for newbies.
LUIGUI is working to make it so linux is more useable/intuitive (and therefore newbies will ask fewer questions and not have to RTFM.
I am of the opinion that Linux as a whole should be more usable for the common mother-in-law. This is not to say that Linux should be dumbed-down, but that there should be an effort to make linux software (in all areas) conform to the standards of useability.
I've been around Linux for a couple years, but it wasn't until the last 6 months or so that I've been really using it extensively. So the obstacles/hard things are fresh in my mind.
The problem with the documentation is that it's written by geeks. Often, when you're so well versed in something, you start to believe some things are common knowledge or easy to pick up. Not so. When you write a doc or guide. Write a test for people to take afterwards, and have them send it back to you when they're done. This will allow you to see what you've overlooked. Making it a web form should make this easy for all people involved.
A lot of the books I've come across tell you how to configure settings in linux using x. Well, what if the linux box used to be your windows box and it doesn't run x? Lots of people begin their linux usage on a discarded windows PC. If we don't help these people out, they'll reinstall windows. There needs to be a reference that shows the newbie how to use and understand linux from the CLI.
Every newbie needs a mentor user. Often, a new user will have really good books and docs, but will lack the context or experience to make sense of all the data. Having a friend who's already walked the same ground is important, because they can listen to your questions and figure out what it is you're really trying to find out. I suggest that we make (if not in place already) a site that will locate the LUG nearest to you and give you contact info so that newbies can get a proper indoctrination into the community (from more of the "elder statesman" users).
Well....that's my two cents, having recently scaled the learning curve.
"Let him go, Ralph. He knows what he's doing." --Otto Mann (simpsons)
The amount of documentation available for Linux is quite adequate. Besides the great set of O'Reilly books, there's a whole load of others of varying quality. Also, the documentation available on the LDP site and others is really good. Any new Linux user who is a savvy computer user will do just fine. The problem is, you can't possibly write any documentation for Linux that "Mom" can use! Linux itself has to evolve to be a much user-friendly desktop OS. When people I know ask me about Linux, and ask me whether they should take the plunge, I give them advice based on what I know of their computer knowledge. If they've successfully fought the IRQ, or plug-and-pray game, re-installed Windoze several times, and they can download and install software in their sleep, I'll point them to "Running Linux" and say "go for it." Otherwise, I tell them to wait a year.
...if every Linux user dropped the attitude and helped the newbies instead of getting off on how superior they are because they know Linux.
Simply reading the manual/readme/whatever doesn't always work. If someone is used to OS xyz or 123 jumping to Linux takes a little help. I think that the Linux community doesn't want average Joe to use Linux because that would put average Joe on the same level.
"If you do not believe in the freedom of speach for those who you despise, you do not believe in it at all." -Noam Chomsky
With the big number of new users that linuz is getting, myself included, I see a need for not neccessarily more documentation, but better ( ok, dumbed down ) documentation.Linux Newbie has been a great help to me, and I know quite a few others who have benefitted from it. I think this is really a good step in the right direction but we need some of these NHFs with the distrobutions. Lets face it for some one learning a new operating system so of those HOWTOs can be pretty cryptic. So, keep if ya got a talent for dumbing down stuff and you know a particular subject like the back of your hand, get and old help file, and rewrite it to help out the new and somewhat ignorant user base. After all, somebody did it for you.
~Spiffington
"Dont knock on Deaths door, ring the bell and run ( he hates that! )."
So you want us to stop following RMS and follow you instead? How will that make us any more independent? Typically fallacious thinking from a troll.
Just because I share (a subset) of beliefs with Person A doesn't mean that I revere that person as a god.
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Linux MAPI Server!
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(Exchange Migration HOWTO coming soon)
I would consider myself a newborn to the Linux enviorment. The man pages have helped me out alot and the HowTo's are a good resource. But I think for Linux to be able to pull more population, it has to be easier to install and use. When I was first installing Linux I posted a question on a QA boared. I never recieved a response. A lot of people are intrested in Linux and would like to stray away from MS. Just like MS does, we need to hold their hand and take them there. We need a way to show how Linux benefits people and business. How about more Linux certifications? And, of coure we all know we need more compatibility with other apps.
Another decision that should me made is if Linux should focus on the PC market or the Server market, or both. Who are we trying to sell Linux too... Only software geeks, who usually don't buy a single piece of software anyway. We want to touch the people who control money in business.
"That engineers have made the astonishing routine may well be their most astounding trick of all." - Stephen Mane
I think our 'instant availability' society is the cause. They know I can give then a simplified, concise answer in seconds, while referring to the manual may cut into their coffee break and actually require them learning something!
No kidding. And it's not just Linux, either, because the jump-on-da-shiny-Web bandwagon dorks over lots of communities other than Linux.
For example, the Sun-Managers mailing list is an unmoderated high-response list for Sun-related emergencies. Anything that isn't directly dealing with Sun, and urgent, doesn't belong. That doesn't mean that those questions don't need to be asked, just that they need to go to a newsgroup or something else. (And this is all spelled out in the FAQ.)
What's it like today? Fucking useless. "I know this is supposed to be only for Suns, so forgive me about this HP-UX question, but" blather blather blather. One guy posted an "emergency" problem because he couldn't create any files in his home directory. The problem? No write permission to that directory. He had no clue what dr-xr-xr-x meant in ls(1) output. He'd never read a man page or bought/stole/borrowed a book.
There were occasionally some actual emergencies posted, and I tried my hardest to help those fellow victims. Eventually I got tired of the sheer amount of laziness and unsubscribed.
My point? Don't bother. It's a complete waste of effort. Those who actually use documentation will know how to get it, and how to produce it. If they really want to learn, I'll help, but if they're in too much of a hurry to read, I'm in too much of a hurry to write.
You cannot apply a technological solution to a sociological problem. (Edwards' Law)
Isn't this the job of Red Hat, et al? Commercial companies who seek to make money from Linux claim that what they bring to the party - that new users can't get from just downloading the sources - is support. Surely, good old market forces will deliver what new users want and need from these companies.
Besides that it's important to have a good installer. Redhat, Suse and some others are doing a great job at this but it needs to get better. People will more likely try longer to understand their system if they can at least read their mail, browse a bit and do other basic tasks. I think most people (with only a single computer) need to have some kind of guarantee that they won't be isolated while trying out Linux.
I'm posting as AC because I never get sent a password when I sign up for an account! But I'v never really felt the need to post before either.
I'm a Linux newbie (well sorta) I've been running Linux on servers for just about a year, and on my desktop (Winbook actually) exclusively for about six months. Prior to that I had no Unix experience. I'm probably not the typical newbie as I got certified by Red Hat back in June.
I have seen some interesting things though. I started by buying lots of books. I own a good chunk of the O'Reilly Bookshelf. This was a huge boost, but one thing this Linux newbie didn't realize was how much I could glean from Unix books. A bunch of lights went on after reading Essential System Administration. The books, the man pages (once I figured out how to make sense of them) and the howtos were great sources of information.
My other source of information was deja.com, and I noticed two very interesting types of Linux users there. There were those who took the time to carefully explain answers and made helpful responses, and then there were those whose sole comment was "Read the man page" or "Type man smb.conf", or "Type ps aux" or something. They never provided an explanation of why someone would want to do that, they just said do it. If I had been some of the users that received messages like that, I would have been incredibly discouraged!
When I first started, I didn't know enough to make heads or tails of a man page, it was only through experience that I discovered how to find the information I needed on my system, now when I teach new users, I stress to them just what a valuable resource they have on their systems, and try to teach them how to use it.
Linux users in general need to be more tolerant of the newbies. Many people forget that many of these people are coming out of the Windows paradigm and that that is a huge adjustment. The best things you can do for a newbie are:
My two cents
Stand Fast,
rhacer
Now how did that get in this thread? Of course, this is offtopic here!
Eric (who obviously needs more caffeine)
Already been done, although not with an over-arching tutorial style.
And before you say "HOWTOs are not enough" consider this: HOWTOs (and man pages) are about all I ever use.
That's not to say that HOWTOs are enough for everyone, just that they are enough for some people. Which indicates that different people need different solutions. Which in turn indicates that there is no one solution that will work for everyone. And therefore create a guru-site may not be as universally useful as you suspect.
---
Linux MAPI Server!
http://www.openone.com/software/MailOne/
(Exchange Migration HOWTO coming soon)
that the point man for the cult has responded so quickly.
People should think for themselves. Like most others in the cult, you follow in lock step.
http://doriath.perl.com/misc/gsg.html
has a great satire on him that is oh so true at the same time, with his word twisting, and ego in full bloom.
I like to think of myself as "computer literate" (7 yrs as a full-time professional programmer and 5 years before that just for fun).
/demand" , ipchains, ip-masq, etc., etc.. And I know, if I ever managed to get the Linux box working as I want it, it will take all of ten minutes to get my Windows PCs happily onto my little network.
So, I got RedHat 6.0. I've done *nix programming and run the MKS shell on my Windows boxes because I love the power of a good *nix-style shell.
So, I was absolutely amazed at how difficult Linux is to set up. (Not the install, that was easy. thanks RedHat)
I spent a week fussing with xcongifurator and friends. I did manage to get X up and running, but was totally underwhelmed when Gnome finally appeared - it looks like Windows but runs much slower - whee. So I grabbed the latest Enlightenment release, found every stupid utility library that it wanted and fought with RPM over dependencies. But, I got that running. It's still slow.
I spent another two weeks with pppd (reading all the HOW-TOs, everything ever mentioned about pppd on deja, etc.). I finally managed to get a dial-up connection running. But, the connection drops immediately, half the time and Netscape is total crap. So, I upgraded to NS 4.7. It's still crap.
My initial plan was to use my Linux box as a gateway for the rest of my (Windows) PCs. But, after the nightmare I had just getting the thing to dial, I can't imagine what's in store when I start dicking around with "pppd
The sad thing is, I really want it to work. I want to have a working Linux box that will be happy as a gateway and will let me screw around with *nix programming again (has anything changed in 8 years?).
But, I'm held back by the lack of adequate documentation, and discouraged by the amount of time it's taken to get as far as I have. The HOW-TOs are mostly out of date. The newsgroups are clogged with people having the same problems I am, and their questions go unanswered.
I want to do it! But I can't find any good, accurate information.
WFM? Indeed.
I have discovered a truly remarkable proof which this margin is too small to contain.
When I first began with Linux, I ordered that book and it was tons more help than the RH 5.2 manual. Could we consider "Running Linux" the standard for introducing new users to Linux?
A few months ago I decided to no longer actively help newbies with their linux-related troubles. Why? Well, for several reasons:
- Most newbies do not read documentation. If they do, they seem to only skim through it and choose not to "swallow" any of it.
- They are often rude. Most newbies who have access to my phone number seem to have a lack of respect for my own time. Believe it or not, people have accosted me verbally for choosing to no longer help them. I just hate when they get offended when you choose not to help!
- They ask far too general questions. "How do I get on the net with Linux?". Of course, if you decide to help with this question, they'll get irritated when you start getting into the details of how things work. You see, newbies want to gloss over everything without having at least some fundamental knowledge of how things work. There are currently other great (and not so great) operating systems for people who do not want to get into these issues.
What I'm getting at is that a lot of people's time is getting wasted on helping people who just decided to "jump on the ol' linux bandwagon". While there's nothing wrong with trying to learn linux, when you're only doing it to be hip and you don't have the fortitude to RTFM, you'll be stepping on some toes!
\end{venting}
Of course, I don't mean all newbies are like this. I was a newbie once! But of course, I bought the books and I read them. Unlike the masses of recent linux converts.
I find it hard to hear such words springing forth from my own mouth, but the concept of a "solutions database" seems remarkably appropriate here.
Generally, I rail like nothing else against solutions databases, because my job is to enable people to solve complex problems in complex systems, and solutions databases tend to grossly oversimplify this task, which I find mildly insulting. also, we must consider the 90%/10% rule, whereby 90% of the calls/problem reports encompass 10% of the possible problem domain, but, conversely, the 10% of the calls which involve the other 90% of possible problems will also consume 90% of support staff's time.
However, we are talking about newbies here. And newbies happen to consitute 99% of the 90% easy calls. Thus a solutions database becomes a realistic and productive answer.
blah blah blah solutions database blah blah solutions database blah.... okay, WTF do I mean by solutions db?
think search engine, but with better semantics, and an astonishingly high signal to noise ratio. the actual database consists of answers -- and only answers, so we don't frustrate users by matching their query with an unanswered question -- which are concise, correct, specific, cross-referenced to more detailed information (THERE'S TFM). these answers will be submitted by whomever (one thing linux has is an amazing volunteer support base), but (here's the catch) must be filtered, combed, possibly edited, by a dedicated group of individuals.
What's the value add beyond the many linux-based search engines, specific help pages, newsgroups/email reflectors, etc? specificity and conciseness -- in short, a very good signal-to-noise ratio. the key is not treating this like a damn swiss army knife -- build one tool that serves one purpose well, rather than doing a shitsplatter job trying to cover everything with one tool.
if anyone is interested in hosting such a site, I'd be glad to help make such a thing a reality.
nathan
*urp!*
Okay... I'l admit it. the more cryptic, the more obfuscated, the more it looks like a train wreck on a Friday night, the more I love it. It gives me a feeling of power, sure it's self rightous power, but power all the same. ( My shrink says it's good for me to be honost with myself :)
:) No siree bob, you had to have knowledge, you needed a friggin manual or you were toast.
I really want to go back to the days when I was hacking on a VAX/VMS. oh baby... no skirt wearing point and click moron was just going to log onto that puppy and start sending email
So screw the newbie... let him/her learn he hard way, or don't learn at all. I HATE shiny icons, I HATE user friendly GUI's...give me a little 9 inch monitor in a dark closet with a 15 wat bulb swaying over my head... damn
Now when some stranger finds out that I'm into computers thay will usually shriek "ME TOO !!!" Then start asking me about my instant message screeen name.. I just slowly walk away... with my head down... emasculated... dear God...what has become of us...
A genius writes code an idiot can understand, while an idiot writes code the compiler can't understand.
One of my biggest frustrations while learning UNIX has been that DOC1 assumes that you know what is in DOC2 and DOC3 which both assume that you know what is in DOC1. Of course, you don't know any of it so you're just SOL.
The Redhat and Mandrake distributions now provide the HOWTOs with an HTMLized front end through KDE. Why not make the HOWTO's themselves HTML and provide an internal link to each section? If in the CD WRITING HOWTO I refer to retrieving a file through FTP I can link to section in the FTP HOWTO.
Then we can convince Google to open up their search technology and provide a help search engine for the HOWTOs. I type in ipforwarding and get a list of docs with references (hopefully with the IPCHAINS HOWTO at the top).
Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
Example:
doit
doit: Command not found.
mv doit pleasedoit
pleasedoit
Permission denied.
doit
doit: Command not found. If the "doit" file is not in your path then you must specify the full path to the file and make sure the file permsissions allow the "doit" file to be executed.
Now that's very verbose but perhaps we can agree to set a system-wide flag that says "VERBOSE_ERRORS" which is left on by default so newbies will have a better understanding of each mistake they make instead of fumbling through and quitting.
Standards? As in the File/Quit crap many windows compat programmers put out... Now tell me one thing.. SINCE WHEN IS QUIT AN OPTION ON A FILE Too many programs put that file menubar option in where it does not belong.
Some standards are just plain wrong. Just because there well adopted does not mean we Linux Apps should jump off that bridge too.
You are a threat to free speach and must be SILENCED!
Fish! LipHo
There are many bood books ("Running Linux" by O'Reilly comes to mind) that help the new Linux user transition into the UNIX/Linux world.
I only wish Sun and HP offered a quarter of the documentation that's available for Linux, and I often find myself grabbing a Linux HOW-TO for a quick guide on how to do certain tasks on HP-UX or Solaris.
I've seen it in computers all of my life, people are lazy and would rather have someone else set something up for them than have to actually read the documentation and do it themselves.
It happens in the Sun world and the HP world, read any of the HP or Sun admin mailing lists, over half of the questions are simple questions, and when you reply to the sender and kindly let them know where to find the answer you usually get a snide remark about not fixing their problem because they need the actual command to run or need to know what to click on in 'sam'.
My advice to new users is always to get a copy of "Running Linux", and try to install Linux themselves. A lot can be learned during the install, especially if it's a "Linux only" system where you can fdisk the drive and not worry.
It's just the way people are, no amount of documentation, friendly manuals, or beginer webpages are going to change the fact that most people are lazy and would rather have someone else do their work for them.
Being a Linux Newbie, my biggest problems were...
1. Finding good distibutions for two processors (PPC: LinuxPPC and Pentium: SuSe)
2. Getting the drives partitioned
3. Getting an X-Windows to start-up (video set-up is a pain on the Pentium-side...the PPC side was pretty easy)
4. Emulating a 3-button mouse or getting 3rd party mice to work correctly (kensington, etc...)
These seemingly minor tasks were very difficult for me as a new user. I found that SuSe had EXCELLENT documentation, where LinuxPPC had really crappy documentation (but the install was a dream!). Coming from a MacOS and W98 GUI, I have to learn to use the GUI first and then command-line stuff later. I find that people are project oriented...get the OS running, figure it out, and get to WORK! I don't have a whole lot of time to experiment...I wish that Linux had a good installer for Pentium systems and good documentation on getting to work right away. Then I would think that Linux would catch on big time.
I have found it easier to relate what I'm learning to the OS I'm most comfortable with. For me, I feel most comfortable with Netware, for the simple reason that I learned that as my first networking OS. I know that Linux isn't just a networking OS, but a desktop OS, but I found it easier to relate a lot of what linux was doing to things in Netware.
I think I was lucky. I had a person who was kind enough, and patient enough to sit down with me and show me some of the basics of Linux. Then I started fumbling around myself, learning what to do and what not to do. But when I do get stuck, and the man's, faq's etc fail me, he's also kind enough to let me call upon him to help out.
That person, is probably the main reason I keep trying to learn Linux. He's become my Linux mentor. I wish every Linxu newbie had someone like that to help them out.
GIHM -The light at the end of the tunnel is only the oncoming train.
Being insufferably snobbish, I've considered moving to BeOS. Two immediate advantages: Linux newbies are not a problem anymore; BeOS enthusiasts still have reasons to be proselytes; I'm a newbie, which is *fun*!
That's three, by the way.
Part of the problem is there is too much documentation. Just reading the documentation sequentially would take ages. It's not all that well indexed, and much of it assumes certain prior knowledge. Much of it is self recursive in prerequisite.
Linux newsbies come in 2 popular flavors: those already experienced with computers (mostly Windows or Mac, but even some UNIX), and those without any computer experience. Those with experience are the largest group right now. And many are actually deploying, or soon will be deploying, Linux (or one of the BSD cousins).
Many newsbies want, and need, to learn fast. And that means not spending the time to learn everything else whether it is actually needed or not. While it's always good to learn the foundations, it's often not practical for many newbies because they are entering the Linux realm because of a need to solve some technical problem in their new deployment today (probably brought on by not having spent the last 3 months reading every document).
I've watched the questions newbies ask. Sure, a few are "where can I learn all about Linux?". But most are more practical like "why am I only getting half my harddrive?". These questions are the result of someone actually setting up, administering, or programming, Linux. They can't just drop all and go read the foundational documents because they have to get things done and running now.
Those with experience also find the introductory documentation, and beginner books, boring and dull. While there is information in there they need to know, it is surrounded more and more with stuff that is totally boring.
So, sure, we need more documentation, and we need less, at the same time. The reader paradigm is shifting from what it was just 2 or 3 years ago.
Those of us with solid Linux eperience need well referenced and indexed documentation. Some of that exists now, but it remains skimpy in many areas, and not well integrated.
Those of us with other UNIX computer experience need to know what's different about Linux, as well as the same. It will be hard reading because most of the differences are the subtle details and the abstract concepts. Many of the differences don't matter today, but they might tomorrow.
Those of us with other OS computer experience need to understand what this is all about, in 25 words or fewer, in terms of how things were done in Windows or Mac or VMS or MVS/390 or whatever it might be (anyone here still using TOPS-10/20?).
Basically the answer is that the documentation needs to be right-sized and customized. Short (read in 30 minutes or less) documents introducing Linux, oriented to each incoming experience, would be among the most needed. A solid (by that I mean well organized for looking things up) reference document is also needed for everyone once they have the Linux experience (no one can know it all anymore, especially with so many distributions and other diversity). Make liberal use of hyperlinks for all concepts, too.
FAQs are OK for the most common questions. But they just can't handle the mass of knowledge that really needs to be presented. While I wouldn't say to drop FAQs, as they are still a valuable tool, other documentation should not assume that FAQs are present.
I'd also like to put much blame on the horrible architecture we call the PC. But that is best left for another thread another day.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
Techies are great at being techie, but newbees know what they stumbled over. A Howto written by a newbee is of far greater value to other newbees because their thinking is usually decidedly non-technical. It stands to reason therefore that a non-technical newbee who has accomplished some task can explain what they did in a way that is understandable to other newbees.
Vocabulary is one of the highest hurdles that a newcomer must clear. Let the newbees write so other newbees can understand.
Nope. Just someone who meets three criteria for finding you amusing:
1) CS major, Philosophy minor so I'm familiar with logic and, in your case, illogic.
2) Liking to keep a browser open while I work.
3) Working on a large project with a long compile-time--leaving me plenty of time to respond.
So, tell me again why I should follow YOUR advice rather than RMS's. Also, could you tell me exactly what actions I have taken that are in "lock step" with RMS?
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It's not the lack of documentation, but what has to be done to configure a linux box. Alot of the documentation is old and many tasks still have to be done from a command line. Documentation is pointless at that point because the typical users is going to toss it right out the window the minute he/she discovers they have to go in and do some typing. Everyone has their favorite input method, be it GUI or CLI. For those of you who argue that CLI is better, you may be right, but by no means are millions of windows-bred users going to use command line tools EVEN IF it is more intuitive. The only hope is in standard GUI based configuration utilities... and I mean STANDARD because now each distribution stubbornly chooses to do it their own way. Theres Linuxconf, YaST, Coas, the list goes on and on. It's pretty frustrating for a new linux user when he goes out and buys a book and the books prefferred configuration tools don't apply to the distro of Linux he's using.
I'm hopeful that the desktop environments (prefferably KDE but perhaps gnome) come to the rescue and provide a set of config applets that work across different distro's. Theres little hope of a Red Hat, or Caldera bending and adopting tools used in another distro.
Blender And Linux Fan
A recent event made me realize just how great the man pages are. My father was visiting for Christmas, we were in the computer room together, playing with hardware, swapping stories and playing games. He isn't new to the computer scene, but its not his life either. Until 3 years ago, he used a C64 only. Since that point, he's had a Win machine. He has reached the point that he can install Win98, and fix most of the common problems for his friends. He even builds machines himself. He's never used Linux before though, and he calls me for more in depth technical questions.
So I showed him Linux. He thought the GUI was great (kde) but when I dropped to the CLI and told him I had more power there, he looked at me and said, "If had to learn to use that, your mother would kill me. I don't have the time.".
Alright.. I could understand that, but then I pulled up a man page... Immediately he blurts out "Is that a help file??" He sounds astonished. I explain that most standard *nix applications have man pages. He was VERY impressed and started going on about how much he "wished MS would have documentation that was 1/4 that extensive and clear."
That was some good warm fuzzies for me on x-mas.
Sorry for rambling. Just thought I would share.
"Anyone who can't laugh at himself is not taking life seriously enough." - Larry Wall
There is two kind og newbies, the user newbies, and the tech newbies.
User newbies, yeah your argument holds, they dont RTFM. But who cares? If some techie takes the time, gets management backup, he could set up a no-questions asked windows look alike productivety workhorse.
The tech newbies are your target here. Desillioned Windows hackers. Frustrated NT Admins. They need a better Oracle server. They need it quickly, but will read the fucking manual. They will get scaredoff by compiling, so there needs to be heaps of docs here to look for.
What is usefull for tech newbies? The HOWTO's are. The FAQs are. The apps docs and man pages are. The Linux Documentation Project is. The distro docs are. Whats missing? Maybe a huge knoledge base would help.
Good helpdesk logging systems can provide lots of usefull stuff, maybe a Open Source Linux Helpdesk would be a good thing.
Greetz SlashDread
Sounds like perhaps we need a newbie shell? I know I wouldn't want my shell stuffed with such code. But I wouldn't want to deny it to others, either.
Now if xterm allowed hyperlinks, and you hyperlinked the error messages, then people can just click on them to get more info, that might be an interesting approach.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
I was born clutching UNIX source code listing in my little hand. Never needed a manual, howto, or man page to do anything. I am UNIX. I need no stinking newbies installing linux just because it's cool. They try it, complain how hard it is, and give up. I gave up years of my life to UNIX/Linux. On irc.linux.com's #linuxhelp most questions are the same, day in and day out. The problem is, everyone wants instant answer and everyone is too lazy to RTFM. At work I get pestered so much with stupid questions about linux that I am sick of it.
to follow me. Think for yourself.
Ah, a college student. The great recruitment grounds for cults. Wait until you get out in the real world and realize that you can't eat following Stallman's bizzare viewpoints.
I fail to see why you being a philosophy minor means anything. I took many philosophy classes in college too, but I don't use that as a basis for arguing that I am right.
(Ok, so I lied about it being 10... :)
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
My Experience as a Linux newbie and what I desired most as a Linux
Newbie...
Though linux was new to me UNIX wasn't. So didn't have to understand
how linux system works in general. I didn't have many of those
questions that are faced by my other friends who started to use or
experiment with linux and had no prior *NIX experience.
I didn't know how to configure my sound card, how to use TrueType
fonts, how to use jdk1.1.7 with StarOffice, How to configure my
network card which the RedHat install program failed to detect, how to
use my CD-RW drive with linux machine. It took me some time to solve
the mystery of winmodems.
Almost always I could find answers to my questions on either HOWTO,
Deja, LinuxStart, tunelinux or irc.linux.com #linuxhelp. Because my
problems were trivial people on linux related IRC channles didn't show
any interest in solving my problems. They most of the times just used
to ignore me, or tell me to RTFM... but my problem was I even didn't
know which program I'm supposed to use to solve the problem so how
would I know which man page to read? May be the questions I was asking
were silly, but I even didn't know that they were silly.
But I could always solve the problems with one of the popular Linux
website's help. I was willing to take efforts and knew where to
look. I wonder how many new Linux users do that. Particularly if s/he
was a windows user in past. Linux HOWTOs are a great help. Websites
like justlinux.com, tunelinux.com, Deja, linuxstart.com do a good job.
Sometimes I was overwhelmed by the amount of information available
about a subject. It took time to filter through all that information
and get the answer.
It is best for a newbie to get in touch with some local Linux guru and
learn from him/her. Every linux enthusiast can contribute some of his
time to local Linux user group and help new linux users learn more.
Unix is simple. It just takes a genius to understand its simplicity. -Dennis Ritchie
I know that there is already a Linux web ring but I think that a centralized place (like linux.org) that has things broken down into subjects with links to specific sites that specialize in one area. I have been using Linux for 2 years now and I have yet to see a site like this. I think that linuxstart.com and linux.com have the right idea but each a little ways off. Then if someone could print out a book that highlights the most used areas of that site could: a) make a lot of money b) help a lot of newbies out c) make life a lot less crowded in the newsgroups Thats my $.02
"If ignorance is bliss, why aren't there more happy people in the world?"
The reason I mostly go to an IRC #linux channel is to ask them: what command will do what I want?
If there was some manual indexing or keyword-associated search effort, this need would be eliminated, and I could focus on solving problems instead of figuring out what the commands are.
Now, don't get me wrong, I've been on the Net since '78, helped crack games back in Apple II days, and seen more OS than I care to recall (CP/M, DOS, Unix flavors, many more). But I have to admit, especially since I've set up Mac Servers to run native Unix, configured various daemons, and so on - it is a tad bit confusing on the Linux side. It would really be nice to do a default Secure install and then enable services as I need them, without looking totally clueless as to the exact name of the script I'm supposed to have guessed at somehow.
I can cope with it, especially with tons of Linux geeks amongst my friends - spent part of Trolloween talking about how to do IPV6 with another friend as we watched them light a dinosaur on fire, for example.
But I think we're going to get way more confusion than usual, as all the totally clueless come wandering over from MSFT Windows1900 to find something that works.
Will in Seattle
The fundamental problem right now is that no one knows what format their documentation should be in, and many people just punt or write minimal documentation as a result. HTML is useless for creating any kind of structured searching (unless you layer a documentation standard on top of it). roff has a decent documentation standard for UNIX, but no one likes it any more. texinfo is nearly impossible to manage since it requires sophisticated tools that don't play nice with anything that anyone actually uses. Plus, it requires a central table of contents which is difficult to manage automatically from un/installation scripts.
I've been thinking about it, and I really believe that Larry Wall's greatest contribution to the world has been POD (not Perl, itself). POD is a very simple documentation format that can be used to follow the roff-ish manual conventions of UNIX, but the format is so simple that it can be converted to man, HTML, texinfo (though texinfo standards usually want more prose than a UNIX manpage has), plain text, etc. This is a very nice solution for someone who's ambitious enough to go through the entire Linux documentation base (HOWTOs, FAQs, man pages, texinfo, PostScript, etc) and convert it all to this one format. Then each distribution could choose it's pet format to render in (probably *both* HTML for the new people and man for those who have "man -k" hardwired into their brains).
It would be nice to layer a few additional features on top of POD:
T which takes a term or phrase and indicates that this particular section of this document defines that term in a way that should be indexed globally. This is not quite the same as LaTeX's indexing. More of an HTML "A NAME=" sort of thing, but where HTMLs mechanism could be called a pull model, T would be a push.
H which takes a semi-colon separated URL and filename. The filename is an image that should be used as a figure in the document (numbered from one on). If the URL is provided, it is the location that should be referenced when users view this document in a text-only setting. The lack of images in POD is the only thing I don't like, and I know that it's quite unreasonable to expect that all Linux users (or UNIX users in general, for that matter) will be viewing documentation under a windowing system, but it would be nice to be able to show diagrams and other figures when the possibility exists.
Given these minor changes, rewriting the documentation would consist of converting all of the extant documentation over to text and then hand-hacking it back to POD (POD is very nearly plain text, with minimal markup that makes HTML look like a general purpose programming language).
Any thoughts. Should I just duck now?
i agree, there is a bit of a dearth of good introductory documentation for Linux. there definitely is a lot of documentation out there, a lot of it very good, and as technical as can be. the HOW-TOs have been one of the best additions in recent years - giving good guides to get things done.
:)
:)
however, both from my own experience getting to know linux and helping others with the same, the question that crops up most commonly, for a newbie, once the lot is installed, is not "How do I do xxx" but rather "Ok, so what do I do now?"
The beginning user is unfamiliar with the potential of what they can do with Linux, rather than how to do what they want. This is where I feel the documentation lacks a little. What we would need is a set of "beginner tutorials" for various tasks, kinda like meta-HOW-TOs, or WHAT-TOs, if you like
These would familiarize the user what they can look into doing, and in the process, get them familiar with the resources they have - what the HOW-TOs are, how to look up something in the man pages, and so on and so forth. Once a user is familiar with what to look through to get an idea of what to do and how, they are usually pretty self-sufficient. A development of this sort of documentation would make entry to Linux less daunting, more friendly, and help users get on and learn the OS with more confidence.
As long as we don't have a stupid paperclip or anything.
Fross
Dealing with newbies just plain sucks. Linux was meant to be exclusive and they just screw everything up. Let then have their lame Os and stop polluting mine. You know you hate them all too, every newbie makes linux look worse and worse...
Force the programmers to do it. Put a gun to their head and threaten their life. Why not? Its not like you could offer to pay them which would be virtuous.
1 Paradox, 1 Fallacy and 1 Missed Deduction.
Paradox: "[Don't]...follow me. Think for yourself." But wait, if I think for myself I'd be following you. Less trivially, my point is that you want us all to follow you in believing RMS to be "bizarre", "neo-communist", "cultish", etc.
Fallacy (non-sequiter): "Ah, a college student." Who says I'm a college student? I graduated years ago and I've been in the "real world" for quite a while.
Missed Deduction: "I fail to see why you being a philosophy minor means anything." Because the philosophy classes I took were (mostly) logic/advanced-logic classes. Very useful with someone of your type.
"I took many philosophy classes in college too, but I don't use that as a basis for arguing that I am right."
Yeah, that's pretty clear.
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Sure there's lots of good documentation, but there's some that should have never written.
jeff_C
This is my first post to /. I wanted to comment because I would consider myself a newbie even though I've used linux on a laptop for the last 1.5 yrs.
:-O )
:-) I am sooo happy to not being using M$ products!
A quick background:
My husband, Dave, set my laptop up for me (since I had not a clue) and I went from there. I just recently installed RedHat 6.1 for the first time and built in the latest kernel. The how-to's, man pages, manuals, and posts to usersgroups really helped but I have to thank Dave for patiently answering my questions. I have no computer/programming background so alot of the jargon used can be a little confusing and where to find answers or files/directories is not always obvious. It can be a little overwhelming at times too.
Unfortunately, I think its impossible to help all newbies because backgrounds are so diverse as well as willingness to dig in and learn yourself. The HowTo's and man pages are the best starting place. When I can't find what I want I often use deja powersearch to get my answer (if one exists). The HowTo's don't always help if you encounter a situation that is not in the how to. For example on my computer at work some of the linked files were either not correct or did not even exist. I could not find the answer on the Red Hat site, but I think that was partly not knowing how to navigate their web site (still learning), however I found the answer by searching linux usergroups on the deja site. It seems to me that it is not too uncommon to run into a problem that is not in a howto.
To get to the point I think it is very useful to have a guide to where all useful info lies (There's plenty of it out there!)such as HowTo's, Distribution web sites FAQs and other helpful info, usergroups and deja powersearch. Beyond that I think the support of the community at sites like this and others, and the usergroups really make a difference too. However, it would be much better if us newbies would at least check and see if the answers already exists. I have to admit its easy to start relying on the local guru but it sure is more satisfying once you figure it out and know that you can fix it/install it/etc the next time around!
A few years ago I never would have thought I could do the things I've done with computers but the support I found has really made the difference. (I've even started learning to program a bit.
Please be patient with us newbies! Someday we'll grow up to be supergeeks too.
Dogmatix
It's like a club, you don't want the trash wondering in off the street.
What is the reaction going to be when people log into their AOL accounts from a Linux box?
:)
I'm a Linux newbie. I started with Debian after my friend installed it on one of my computers and showed me the basics. After a few months of just playing with my pre-installed Debian, I printed the installation documentation and was able to install it on my friend's computer.
The manpages can be vague sometimes, but there is a lot of it and usually I find that I can acheive my goals by simply reading and re-reading manpages. The HOW-TOs are also very helpful... without them I think I would have a much more difficult time.
Basically, it comes down to Linux and Unix being 'different' from MSDOS and all the other commercial mainstream ilk that makes it initially difficult. For me, persistence and RTFM has worked in Linux, although I'm sure not everyone would be as willing to spend the time that I did (and still do) learning the system.
I would have loved ONE place to go like the Microsoft KB when I was trying to get my redhat going. Yes, I could go to the RH site for most of it, but I often went to a list of other bookmarks as well.
DO NOT DISTURB THE SE
I agree that enough documentation exists to fill a stadium. Moreover, I've learned to navigate much of it to find my answers. I find that sometimes the documentation helps, other times I've modified so many files that I couldn't undo the changes when whatever I was trying to do didn't work anyway.
I have a couple of observations. First, my local users group (Cincinnati Linux Users Group) responds quickly, and most times correctly, to questions I ask. The linux newsgroups have been a font of information for me. I read through the messages just to gain more understanding. I find that as long as I insert some sort of text indicating I've at least tried to find an answer elsewhere the necessary help if forthcoming.
On the flipside, I think the windows software world has trained users to ask for answers from a certified source. Since no manuals exist the individual will take a class, purchase a book, call the helpdesk or whatever to find an answer. The corporations pay for these materials so why not use them. They create a source of revenue for ISV's and third parties, so there is no incentive to provide your answers along with the software. This brings to mind the sort of recent post about the MS engineers doing the usability study on Linux by trying to play games. MS's own engineers didn't go to the manual first.
Corp's aren't to the point where they can support a help infrastructure for linux, the installed base isn't large enough so the individual is on their own. If there is a help infrastructure in place it's for a commercial version of unix.
Finally, I think most linux adopters are either network admins that understand enough about how things work to know what kind of documentation they need to look for to make it work in linux, or they are individuals willing to navigate the technical waters for the satisfaction of making linux run.
linux is running for me on a laptop. I've installed StarOffice, Apache, PHP and other software to make it useful to me. I'm killing myself to get freeamp working and 2 pcmcia network cards working simultaneously on RH6.0. I'm also wrestling with sound and networking on a desktop machine. I must say installing NT was much easier, but there's no satisfaction. Conquering XF86Config and editing a modeline to make 16 bit color work is satisfying - now I know why it works along with how to do it.
So, for now, I think there is enough help out there. If a user is really serious about using linux to meet his needs - whether corporate or individual - I think the individual must give back to the community. Attend a local LUG meeting, chime in on the local mailing list, post questions to some newsgroups and I think the newbie will find the answer he needs.
In order for someone to think for themsleves, they do not have to agree with me. Boy, you are dense. I know some people that agree with some of what Stallman says, and not others. They agree with him more than I do, and that does not make them sheep.
If you are a CS major, you are a COLLEGE STUDENT. You may not live on campus, but you go to college. Do they teach you common sense there?
Your attempts to paint Stallman detractors with a wide brush of wannabe cult leaders is quite interesting.
Everytime someone says something about the bearded freak you are the FIRST one to defend everything he says. That is how you are the point man.
Maybe you should go over to pych labs and volunteer for some experiments. Or talk to your philosophy professor about your off-base assertions. I am sure your C would beome a D- pretty quick.
I'm still learning Linux myself, but I'm at about the point where the man pages, the HOWTOs, etc. are actually helpful.
The man pages and the HOWTOs don't often tell you what to do when something goes wrong. What do you do when you've RTFM, followed the instructions and it still doesn't work?
--
Pretend there is some witty statement here.
...are examples. Sometimes I don't want to go through all the switches, options, etc. I just want to get something working quickly, and then tweak it when I have time. It would be nice to have an "example" section toward the end of the man page, with a few common uses.
I'm not saying this to be nasty to MS users - I'm sure Electrical engineers can get a good laugh at us programmers for our pitiful understanding of these computer things that we spend the day working on. The point is that you can't pile info on to people which is above their head and expect them to absorb it, so start VERY slow and low, and if they want to go deeper, they will find how to get there. You first spent years in grade school learning 2+2=4 before you tried to do derivations!
Whenever a newbie has a problem, just email them the kernel source. That'll fix the problem.
If you force new users to use man pages then they'll quickly realize that what they are using is a bit out of date looking. Linux needs a windows help file type system, that is linked together with little question mark tools for specific objects etc such as many windows aps have.
I find a few things disturbing about a number of the posts I've read regarding this issue, and the issue of "newbies" in general.
I have been "using" linux for about 3 years now. I am by no means an expert, but I am definately a strong supporter of the ideals and technology brought to the proverbial table by Linux.
HOWEVER
Here is the impression I receive when I read various articles, posts and other info at /. and other Linux advocacy sites:
1. The purpose of Linux is to provide a viable alternative to the current, bloated, closed-source commercial NOS offerings (NT, WIN2K, NOVELL, UNIX)
2. Linux is superior to all of the commercial operating systems because of the "open" and "collaberative" environment in which it is developed.
3. Therefore, Linux should be the server (possibly client) OS of choice for enterprise and business customers wanting to stay on the cutting edge of technology.
4. If you don't like Linux, you SUCK.
5. If you would like to learn how to use Linux, please be prepared to suffer through the coarse, rude, and sometimes humiliating "newbie" "Rite-of-Passage" which includes but is not limited to: degrading comments about one's technical abilities, degrading comments about one's ability to glean information from increadibly technical, usually outdated, and poorly cataloged documentation.
6. If you are not comfortable with #5, please don't use Linux, we don't want you anyway.
Oppose the implicit arguements of 1-3 w/ those of 4-6.
To clarify: I understand the fears of oversimplifying/overautomating to the point of uselessness and inefficency (run Win2K for an example). I am not suggesting that the Linux operating environment be significantly changed; I merely suggest that the documentation be enhanced in order to allow a larger section of potential users to come onboard the Linux ship.
For a community of users that claims among it's strengths openness, peer review, and public knowledge, the Linux usership is quite closed off and eliteist.
-@d
P.S. -- Please post flames here
I see a few posts here whose attitude is "Screw the newbie." One, in fact, used those words.
While that's a fine attitude to have, check this out: For every person to whom you say "Screw you, you're a newbie" that's another $89.99 in Bill's wallet.
--
Pretend there is some witty statement here.
Why do you hang around Slashdot? It's pretty clear any kind of detailed discussion would go WAY over your head. Let's do this one at a time.
"If you are a CS major, you are a COLLEGE STUDENT."
True.
"...but you go to college."
False. Why? Because I never said I was currently a CS major. Brush up on those reading skills.
"Your attempts to paint Stallman detractors with a wide brush of wannabe cult leaders is quite interesting."
What attempts? Find me one quote (by me) that says RMS detractors are cult leaders. In fact, you are the one calling RMS and people who agree with him "cultish".
"Everytime someone says something about the bearded freak you are the FIRST one to defend everything he says.
Doubly false. I've only ever responded to you AND I don't defend everything he says. In fact, I haven't defended anything he says, just explained it.
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You think Linux is hard for a newbie...
Try to get them to Install OpenBSD. Just for kicks. >8-)
I'm an experienced unix user and I did that. Reminded me of installing Irix 6.2.
Solaris is easy, at least solaris 7 is...
"Fuzzy Wuzzy was a bear, Fuzzy Wuzzy had no hair... Fuzzy Wuzzy wasn't fuzzy was he?"
I was pretty impressed when I saw it...
http://www.linuxcare.com/support/
The sad situation is that most people won't read their manuals. Proof of this can be seen by observing the millions of VCR's that steadily blink 00:00:00. Not reading manuals is human nature. To read a manual is to enter the "student" mode, and people want to stay in their "user" mode. Hackers and geeks are not normal people. We are always in the "student" mode, so reading the manual is second nature.
Not reading the manual is not confined to Linux, as we all know. I've seen quite a few people running Windows on a 20" monitor at 640x480 resolution. Or using Excel for wordprocessing because "it has columns already for me". Over Christmas, I was playing Freecell on my Aunt's computer. She was very surprised that there were games on her computer, even though she's had it for two years.
When the average person does decide that they do need to read the manual, they refuse to read it all the way through, and instead try to find that one piece of information they currently need. This stratagem never works, of course, since they have no foundation to base that information on.
However, there are a couple of simple things that can ease a newbies transition to Linux. First of all, don't ignore or flame a newbie question on the lists. Take some time out of every week to hit the lists and gently reply to newbie questions. Don't tell them to RTFM, but instead direct them to a more appropriate list if the question is off-topic. If it's already covered in the FAQ, patiently explain it all over again, then show them the FAQ.
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
the question that crops up most commonly, for a newbie, once the lot is installed, is not "How do I do xxx" but rather "Ok, so what do I do now?"
That is exactly it - there is no guiding doco for beginners. After the installation, the documents perhaps could then give examples of what the user could do next with links to the relevant HOW-TO docos.
This would at least then put the HOW-TO docos in context and provide a framework which would show the users where everything fits together.
When programmers write documentation for a program or system of programs, they usually organize it according to how the program is written, or how the modules of the system interact, or the functions of the modules.
For example, the chapters of the Linux System Administrator's Guide seem to be organized as follows:
- Introduction/overview (chapters 1 and 2)
- Files and disks (chapters 3, 4, and 5)
- Booting, shutting down, logging in, logging out (chapters 6, 7, and 8)
- Backups (chapter 10)
- Time (chapter 11)
The Network Administrator's Guide goes like this:What's wrong with that approach, you may ask?
When non-programmers approach a computer system, they don't care about how it's put together; they care about doing something with it. The division of tasks that can be done with a computer system is mostly orthogonal to the division of modules in it.
For example, if you want to download mail from an ISP to a Linux box over a dial-up connection, that will involve booting the computer, logging in, executing a program that lives somewhere on my hard drive, making a PPP connection, etc., etc. The information relevant to that task is spread through the above two books. How can a newbie who wants to read mail with Linux, but doesn't want to become a Unix wizard, know where the relevant information is in those hundreds of pages -- not to mention HOWTOs and man pages? If something goes wrong, how can a newbie know where to look for the solution?
--
"But, Mulder, the new millennium doesn't begin until January 2001."
send all spam to theotherwhitemeat@ropine.com
A well-publicized document that pointed to HOW-TOs, O'Reilly, gnu.org, etc. would be a good start. But it would be nice if we could somehow verbalize the "Zen" of finding Linux docs. I'm sure anyone who's spent any amount of time trying to configure the OS has entered the special state where all of the sudden you simply know where and how to find the right information. It's like a combination of knowing all the right keywords, knowing all the right sources, and being able to filter out the crap...and it's a feeling of immense power :)
I don't think I could begin to write a document like this; perhaps we could find a journalism major. But it really seems to me that the meta-skill of groking the documentation is as important or more so than just RTFMing. Is there anything remotely like this out there?
When I tried to install Linux for the first time (Red Hat 6 when it came out), my biggest problem with HOWTOs was this: just about every HOWTO assumed that you were working in a generic Linux system with no special configuration programs. If I want to use those programs at all, the HOWTO can be almost useless because the special tools and the information in the HOWTO can conflict, and the HOWTO generally won't tell you to, for instance, edit the source files that Red Hat uses to create its sendmail.cf. Not to mention obsolete HOWTOs. It took me a long time to figure out just what the 1024 cylinder restriction on LILO actually meant, simply because a lot of the documentation that mentioned it was written before LBA mode became widespread.
Linux, unlike the 'other OSes' exposes
its wide landscape to the new user.
I liken it to Christopher Columbus
looking out and seeing land and saying, What do I do now? .
Like Christopher, the newbie usually
just drops anchor at the first
convenient landfall and hopes some
natives appear to show him around and
maybe give him a map. Of course this
assumes that the locals are friendly and
can speak the newbie s language. and hasgood maps.
Do we have good maps?
Do we speak their language?
Can we change the answer to Where doyou want to go today?
I believe we do and we can because we
get the biggest kick when other folks
can use our stuff.
Mitd
mitd -- Made in the Dark
"One good thing about spam... You don't gotta answer it"
you all know some version of the saying...
(and in M$'s case...what to throw away...)
A book, while informative and helpful, is no substitute for practical experience. I know a lot of people who would like to do stuff with a computer, but don't want to take the trouble to sit at a computer and try out what they read in books. They refuse to learn on their own, but instead trust some digested form of another person's (a.k.a. "guru") experience. So newbies really can't just learn by RTFM. They also need to try out that knowledge on a real machine. Who cares if they screw it up? I know that I had to reformat my hard drive the first time I installed linux improperly (of course, I had backups). At least I learned something useful and important. Making mistakes in linux by actually using the machine has taught me a lot more than if I had just read linux for dummies. We should encourage newbies to do the same. We don't want newbies to forever remain newbies, barely ignorant of their computer! We want to make them thoroughly knowledgeable and capable of exploring new environments on their computers without anyone else's help. This is best for newbies, and while it can be painful and time consuming, is infinitely rewarding, both in and of itself, as well as teaching the person something new.
good call! that's a genuinely good idea!
I remember the first time I installed Linux on my computer, like 2 years ago. I tried get things to work: I found HOW-TOs, I knew about man pages, etc. I was able to boot, and then do some cd and ls... wow! ;-) I think that if you have any knowledge of computer (PC) you should be OK with the basic things about Linux. (By the way, I think that only people who know about computers, OS, etc., and want to tweak things, do some programming, etc. should install Linux by themselves. Other people should use it because someone else installed it for them.) But when I tried to get my LAN and PPP connections working, I stumbled across a lot of document that told me go see http://somewhere.org to get the driver, the information, the example, etc. The problem was... I try to get connected to the Internet, how do you want me to go there to find information??? And last month the same thing happened when my provider changed the way my DSL modem works. Cut from the Internet, I had at least 10 URLs that would tell me how to make my things work, but I was cut from the world. So I had to spend 2 days tweaking and trying things by myself and calling a friend to ask him to bring me some files on a disk. :-( I can't see any way to solve this "problem" since you cannot know in advance what will be needed be everyone, and in general using the Internet as a reference is a good thing IMO. But sometimes it's ironic... ;)
Hello.
I represent an organization called i-docs.org. We are a free hosting service run by geeks for people who want to host documentation. If you are the manager of an opensource project and would like to contribute documentation or if you would like to help out and write documentation. Please contact me hakker@substance.com or one of the email addresses on the page. Please check it out. This is completely free. We are setting it up themes.org style in that the layout is like e.i-docs.org for Enlightenemnt documentation. We already have many people on board, so come check us out. And by the way, we are getting a whole new back end of the site in the next couple weeks, so stay tuned.
Thanks.
Most of the responses to this appear to be dealing with the issue of trying to train people technically --- linux is different from windows, how do we get people to understand that, etc, etc.
That's a serious issue, no doubt. But there's another problem, too: how do we react to the way that the influx of new people will change our culture? Regardless of how strong we believe our culture to be, it _will_.
Recent history is full of examples of this. Newsgroup culture was pretty much demolished in 94-95; instead of a wave of newbies once or twice a year who learned the social rules (or got smacked for not learning them) and settled down to become "good citizens", we got a continuous wave that overwhelmed the groups --- normal rules of conduct broke down, most of the groups collapsed under the weight of spam, and they didn't start regrouping until (a) anti-spam tools were developed and (b) most of the newbies left for the web. The fundamental failure there was a social one: the existing newsgroup members were unable to successfully communicate the social rules that held the newsgroups together to the wave of newbies.
The prevelance of email spam dates to about the same time. I remember having a long argument with an early spammer about this; despite the fact that there were normative social prescriptions against it, he refused to conform to the social norms --- and there, it turned out, was no way to enforce it.
Or consider the web. I remember --- as do many readers here --- the days when the web was almost exclusively the domain of (a) personal sites or (b) research information. Such things still exist, but they've been overwhelmed by the commercial presence --- and are hard to find unless you already know about them or have a lot of time on your hands, as search engines are largely useless.
What's the point in this recapitulation? Simply this: the linux community is experiencing a wave of newcomers; if it hasn't happened already, it will soon be true that the majority of linux users have been using it for less than a year; and the corporations are starting to muscle in, too. And, as the newsgroup communities and the nascent web were unalterably changed when they experienced this influx, so too will the linux world be --- and with it, many of the things that originally attracted people to the linux world will be diluted or go away entirely.
This reads like a reactionary social tract, and to a certain extent it is --- except that I don't think there's any point in fighting it; these things happen, and what comes out at the end will be an overall improvement for most people. But I do think it would be useful for us to think about the following questions:
* What are the things that first attracted us to linux, or to the linux community?
* What are the things that are most important to not lose sight of, and still have, after the influx has passed?
* How do we go about promoting those things and, in a sense, converting the new users to believe in them?
The question that's disturbing me the most:
* what happens when the stock price of companies which have recently converted to the open source movement fall? Do they continue to stick with open source, or do they retrench and pull back to the closed-source box? How do we convince them not to do the latter?
I'd like to see this moderated up, but I fear it won't be =\
This isn't a troll, it's a genuine statement about how most of us new users see the pompous, arrogant, unhelpful hordes who will do anything to keep new users away from linux at any costs.
fortunately not all are like that, but it seems many if not most are.
Any of you checked out the ask.com website? Do they allow people to add questions and their answers? Or better yet, if they haven't patented the damn system yet, we could make a website which uses that method of searching.
asdf
That attitude is whats wrong with alot of computer prefessionals and give us a bad name.
Now I'm a LINUX newbie, I've got a couple of boxes running RedHat, Caldera OpenLinux and YellowDog Linux PPC, but I'm no expert. I've read the manuals and the on-line documentation, but there is alot missing.
When I have a Windoze question, I can ask around and people are helpful. When I have a Macintosh question, I either know the answer or someone on support.apple.com will help me. But when I have a Linux question...all one gets is Read The Fletchin Manual. You know what alot of those manuals are wildly out of date. I bought a Caldera book just five monthes ago...guess what...the only Caldera book then covered 1.3...I'm running 2.3 it helps me not. So what good is RTFM when TFM is out of date?
Just the other night my ISP switched our IP numbers around, a couple of hours early. My RedHat 5.2 box hung and hung hard when I tried to fire up X...then on reboot SMB took 45 minutes to start because of the IP number problem. I didn't see that in any manual. I got lucky that someone at my ISP could walk me through using PICO to edit the config files so I could get my box back up.
If I'd have asked you, I would have just gotten burned.
There are a couple of problems here.
... unpleasant. Most linux newbies, coming from the windows world, don't understand how a computer works, don't want to understand how a computer works, and expect everything to be simple and easy. Most linux advocates are incapable of understanding that viewpoint, and have absorbed a cultural arrogance.
* UNIX programmers have long had a reputation for arrogance which has carried over into the linux movement.
* Most linux advocates are either programmers or hackers and, as such, fundamentally are incapable of thinking like a neophyte, or of understanding what it's like to truly have no clue how computers work.
* Most windows desktop users have no clue how their computer works --- the expectation is that it should be able to do whatever you want it to in a few clicks. (The SJ Mercury News ran an op-ed piece a few weeks ago decrying how computers in general are too hard to use --- and this isn't an uncommon sentiment outside our industry).
The confluence of these factors is
Putting these people in the same room with each other is like handing a can of gasoline to a pyromaniac.
First off, I agree with most of his points, except number 5.
:-)
5. Who needs a Fricking Manual? It is remarkable that, in an era of holograms, high-quality video, and million-color graphics, people still think we should all be learning by reading words scratched on parchment.
Ray, with this one statement you invalidated everything else you had to say. First off, who said the manual was a printed document? Secondly, if you are too stupid to read and comprehend words, even poorly written ones, you shouldn't be using a computer. Hell, in my view you should be shot, and decrease the surplus population.
Now, lets analyse the types of guys who know the things you want to learn. Essentially, these are the kind of people who don't read the frickin' manual. They don't need to. It's instinctive, man. They might look at a man page every now and again, but that's a pretty rare event. They've never looked at a HOWTO, usually because they like to figure it out themselves, to gain deeper insight into the way the system works. Hell, these kind of people look at the code more often than the manual. Their English often isn't the best and their people skills are pretty few and far between (although there are notable exceptions). And you honestly expect these people to write a manual a person who doesn't even want to read it can understand?
Here's my new advice for you, Ray. GWTFM. Go write the friggin' manual if you really want one that bad. Just saying that there is a need for a manual doesn't get one made. You're quite free to write one and distribute it however the hell you like. Welcome to the the land of the free (as in beer).
---
- Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set him on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
If a newbie asks you a question, listen (or read) carefully enough to give a relevant answer. "I know how to do that, but I don't know how to teach it to you" is a relevant answer, and one which demonstrates respect for the person who asked.
--
"But, Mulder, the new millennium doesn't begin until January 2001."
send all spam to theotherwhitemeat@ropine.com
In my opinion, the problem isn't documentation for newbies, its documentation for intermediate users. There is a ton of documentation aimed at the complete newbie, the home/office Windows user that has only just recently heard of Linux and decides to give it a try. Most of it is good enough. Its not perfect, but it will get most people through to the next stage.
And this is where they get lost. Fine, Linux is installed, they've got pretty little things to click on and maybe they're even on the Net. Now what? Here is where there is a lack of documentation.
For example, I don't think I've ever seen a clear set of intructions detailing how to download and install an arbitrary software package off the Net. I haven't really looked for one, I will admit, but I've never noticed anything like that over at the LDP or anything.
Also, most documentation breaks down when the user wants to do anything 'adventuresome' -- more than just word processing, emailing, and surfing the Net. Its assumed that a "Linux for Dummies" (please don't sue me IDG) book is for Dummies, and that these Dummies are unwilling to learn anything that don't need to, that reading makes their brains hurt. But what about the people that do want to learn? Where is the documentation for them? I'm not talking about the "The Linux Kernel Hackers' Guide", "Beowulf HOWTO", or other high-end specialty topics. I'm talking about wannabe geeks that want to read clear, concise, complete documentation about everything they can get their hands on. Sure, they could learn everything by experimentation, or asking questions, but wouldn't some decent docs save alot of time and anguish?
You can divide most documentation into two groups:
1. Dumbed down, simple howto instructions that give no depth to the subject. Great for absolute newbies who are unable to think on their own.
2. Exceedingly complicated, jargon-filled monstrosities on obscure technical topics that leave anyone who isn't a regular Linux hacker scratching their head.
Perhaps this is a slight overexageration. I don't think all docs suck. I find some (most?) of the LDP's HOWTOs to be decent references. I've got a couple Linux books that aren't absolutely horrible. Mailing list archives can provide startling insights.
Oh, and a point about man pages. These are obviously not geared towards the novice. Perhaps a different set of man pages would be helpful. Instead of a long listing of options, how about a longer description of the command, details on common uses, and examples of all of the options? To a newbie, that is alot more useful than set of confusing switches he'll never use.
Another thought I've just had: What about a collaborative (Open Source? heh) documentation project that can be easily updated as it is proved to be inadequate? Even something like the PHP manual where people can pose questions and have them answered. Its cool because you can post a question directly following the description of a function, and people will answer that question.
This is the lazy way to go, but it might be the best way. The other way is to have writers update the documents based on input from readers. The problem is finding people knowledgable enough to cover any given subject that have enough free time to keep the material updated.
I'm a big fan of the OSWG, even though they hate me. :) They've got some good people and some good ideas, and the work is starting to flow. They've got a few newbie guides in the works, including "Linux for Starters", "Migrating from Windows to Linux", and "Non-Condescending Guide to Linux for New Users". Unfortunately, all of these are in their 'early planning stages' and won't be available for along time.
A central resource with all of the available Linux documentation easily accessible would be nice. A searchable, linkable, browsable archive containing each and every last gem would be invaluable, methinks. Of course, it would have to be kept up to date. The OSWG is rumored to be working on something along these lines.
The real problem with getting people to write documentation is that its not 'sexy' enough. People would much rather be playing Quake, or coding some killer app then spending their time trying to write interesting documentation on something most see as a boring topic. I really don't think that documentation (or its authors!) get the attention is deserves. So here I'm going to give a great big THANK YOU to all of the worlds Linux and Open Source documentation writers and the FAQ and HOWTO maintainers. You guys provide an invaluable service. Keep up the good work.
I'd better stop on that note, before I think of something else to say.
What a pseudo-intellectual you are.
To announce your major the way you did means that you either are currently going to school, or recently graduated. I have never met anyone with any real level of experience who talks about what their major is. Either that or you are just ego stroking youself.
Ah yes, I have explained what he says. The interpreter for the unwashed masses. Sounds very elitist to me, which is why you are the perfect point man for Stallman's cult.
Thank you for teaching us peons the truth. Maybe you can branch out and form your own cult.
I recall RMS saying once that he disliked O'reilly because they made such good manuals that free software developers would not bother making their own _free_ manuals. I think this seriously comes into play when discussing Linux newbies and their need for coherent manuals. The biggest problem that I see is too many newbies not buying Linux. Why is this a problem, you might ask. Well, it turns out that because they didn't buy Linux, it didn't come with a paper manual. And everyone knows that a paper manual is so much more appealing when trying to find general answers. Digital manuals can be too in-depth or often overwhelm users by their searching capabilities that provide too many results. If more people would buy a bundled Linux distribution rather than downloading Linux for free - at least they couldn't say WFM!
Does this really solve the problem though? Of course not, all the newbies aren't going to rush out and pick up a 50$ copy of Redhat 6 or Suse because they can't find out how to do X. Instead it seems that some alternative needs to be created. In my eyes, this alternative is before it's time. The world isn't really ready for digital books yet - sure, there are a few places stacking up for the new paradigm shift. I just read an article the other day in Infoworld that discussed traditional publishing houses like Houghton Mifflen, Bertelsmann, and Macmillan teaming up with technology partners such as Xerox, Hewlett-Packard, Reciprocal, and Fatbrain.com. However Infoworld agrees with me that "until portable technology had evolved to a point that's truly comparable to the print reading experience, certain types of information will remain in print for some time." In the same report Jack Staff - chief Internet economist at Zona Research - mentioned, "A book is as fine a PDA as you'll ever find. So as long as we still have paper, binding, and so on, there will be people that want to buy books.".
It looks like the technology for Neal Stephenson's "I recall RMS saying once that he disliked O'reilly because they made such good manuals that free software developers would not bother making their own _free_ manuals. I think this seriously comes into play when discussing Linux newbies and their need for coherent manuals. The biggest problem that I see is too many newbies not buying Linux. Why is this a problem, you might ask. Well, it turns out that because they didn't buy Linux, it didn't come with a paper manual. And everyone knows that a paper manual is so much more appealing when trying to find general answers. Digital manuals can be too in-depth or often overwhelm users by their searching capabilities that provide too many results. If more people would buy a bundled Linux distribution rather than downloading Linux for free - at least they couldn't say WFM!
Does this really solve the problem though? Of course not, all the newbies aren't going to rush out and pick up a 50$ copy of Redhat 6 or Suse because they can't find out how to do X. Instead it seems that some alternative needs to be created. In my eyes, this alternative is before it's time. The world isn't really ready for digital books yet - sure, there are a few places stacking up for the new paradigm shift. I just read an article the other day in Infoworld that discussed traditional publishing houses like Houghton Mifflen, Bertelsmann, and Macmillan teaming up with technology partners such as Xerox, Hewlett-Packard, Reciprocal, and Fatbrain.com. However Infoworld agrees with me that "until portable technology had evolved to a point that's truly comparable to the print reading experience, certain types of information will remain in print for some time." In the same report Jack Staff - chief Internet economist at Zona Research - mentioned, "A book is as fine a PDA as you'll ever find. So as long as we still have paper, binding, and so on, there will be people that want to buy books.".
It seems like the technology for Neal Stephenson's "A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer" (Diamond Age) does not exist yet.
What was that article about Paper Computers? Will that help?
Joseph Elwell.
intimate with his/her lover not the command line. God if I hear that again I'm going to burst. Tell me what is so intimate about the commandline: 1. I want to do something 2. Read how to do it 3. Do it Intimacy with your computer is collecting stray lines of code and stringing them for fun. Nobody does that. Both newbies and some unix users need to swallow their pride. I switched away from Windows when I realized what a whining stuck-up ass it turned me into.
The message on the other side of this sig is false.
Technical writing is a skill that most of us do NOT have. Most technical writers couldn't tell you the first thing about a filesystem, but can take the technical and make it easier to swallow...the get good manuals, we need people with technical writing skills..I ESPECIALLY hate the "profesionals" in my field who ask the most "obvious" ridiculous questions,completely clueless and they make twice as much as me..it's a damn shame
If you're not a Liberal in your 20's, then you have no heart.If you're still a Liberal in your 30's you have no brain.
Does this really solve the problem though? Of course not, all the newbies aren't going to rush out and pick up a 50$ copy of Redhat 6 or Suse because they can't find out how to do X. Instead it seems that some alternative needs to be created. In my eyes, this alternative is before it's time. The world isn't really ready for digital books yet - sure, there are a few places stacking up for the new paradigm shift. I just read an article the other day in Infoworld that discussed traditional publishing houses like Houghton Mifflen, Bertelsmann, and Macmillan teaming up with technology partners such as Xerox, Hewlett-Packard, Reciprocal, and Fatbrain.com. However Infoworld agrees with me that "until portable technology had evolved to a point that's truly comparable to the print reading experience, certain types of information will remain in print for some time." In the same report Jack Staff - chief Internet economist at Zona Research - mentioned, "A book is as fine a PDA as you'll ever find. So as long as we still have paper, binding, and so on, there will be people that want to buy books.".
It looks like the technology for Neal Stephenson's "I recall RMS saying once that he disliked O'reilly because they made such good manuals that free software developers would not bother making their own _free_ manuals. I think this seriously comes into play when discussing Linux newbies and their need for coherent manuals. The biggest problem that I see is too many newbies not buying Linux. Why is this a problem, you might ask. Well, it turns out that because they didn't buy Linux, it didn't come with a paper manual. And everyone knows that a paper manual is so much more appealing when trying to find general answers. Digital manuals can be too in-depth or often overwhelm users by their searching capabilities that provide too many results. If more people would buy a bundled Linux distribution rather than downloading Linux for free - at least they couldn't say WFM!
Does this really solve the problem though? Of course not, all the newbies aren't going to rush out and pick up a 50$ copy of Redhat 6 or Suse because they can't find out how to do X. Instead it seems that some alternative needs to be created. In my eyes, this alternative is before it's time. The world isn't really ready for digital books yet - sure, there are a few places stacking up for the new paradigm shift. I just read an article the other day in Infoworld that discussed traditional publishing houses like Houghton Mifflen, Bertelsmann, and Macmillan teaming up with technology partners such as Xerox, Hewlett-Packard, Reciprocal, and Fatbrain.com. However Infoworld agrees with me that "until portable technology had evolved to a point that's truly comparable to the print reading experience, certain types of information will remain in print for some time." In the same report Jack Staff - chief Internet economist at Zona Research - mentioned, "A book is as fine a PDA as you'll ever find. So as long as we still have paper, binding, and so on, there will be people that want to buy books.".
It seems like the technology for Neal Stephenson's "A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer" (Diamond Age) does not exist yet.
What was that article about Paper Computers? Will that help?
Joseph Elwell.
Well, I guess my work is done here. Your most recent posting seems to be responding only to the voices in your head, not any of my points.
---
Linux MAPI Server!
http://www.openone.com/software/MailOne/
(Exchange Migration HOWTO coming soon)
...VAX/VMS had a very nice hierarchical online help system. :-)
--
-Rich (OS/2, Linux, BeOS, Mac, NT, Win95, Solaris, FreeBSD, and OS2200 user in Bloomington MN)
Mainframe/UNIX Bit Twiddler and long time Windows/Linux Hobbyist.
The Theorem Theorem: If If, Then Then.
It's not that bad. I quad-boot Win98, RH6.0, OpenBSD 2.6 and Solaris 7 myself... so this problem has popped up for me once too.
It just sounds like windoze rewrote your master boot record... it happens. In the future, when it gives you the 'ol "your boot record has changed" bit DON'T let it do it.
Just boot with your linux boot disk [you did make one, right?] and reboot. When in linux, carefully RTFM, tell LILO you have two boot sectors (windoze & linux), RTFM again to make sure you did it right, reboot and all will be well. If you're lucky enough to have linuxconf, skip all the manual editing and just configure it there. LILO just needs to rewrite the MBR it's way.
Good Luck
--
You know, my first experience beyond DOS was an account on a small university's VAX system. After they gave me a login, a password, and the number for the modem pool so I could access it from home, I asked them where I should go to get started on learning my way around. They pointed at the ever-present Manual Wall that tends to accompany VAX systems. Sure it was very large, and very technical, but it forced me to _learn_. A year later, I took a summer job that involved some Unix stuff. My boss asked me what I knew about Unix, and I told him "next to nothing." He loaned me a copy of Unix SVR4: An Introduction and told me to read as much as I could of the book in my first 2 days of working. Once again, I was forced to really learn the concepts. If there was a term or concept I didn't understand, I didn't ask someone else. I looked in other sources. IS THIS REALLY SO GODDAMN HARD YOU FUCKING IDIOTS? PICK UP A BOOK AND READ! YOU'LL SURPRISE YOURSELF IN NO TIME AT ALL! YOU'LL UNDERSTAND WHY THINGS WORK THE WAY THEY DO! YOU'LL KNOW MORE THAN JUST HOW TO DO THE SPECIFIC TASK DESCRIBED IN A HOWTO! YOU WON'T ANNOY PEOPLE WHO PAID THEIR DUES AND FIGURED THE SHIT OUT ON THEIR OWN! Thank you, I'm done now.
Two points:
...richie - It is a good day to code.
I can envision it now...LUG's all over the country going door to door to preach the Gospel that is Linux...handing out pamphlets...asking to come into your household to "discuss" Linux...to hold your hand and banish the demonseed from Redmond.
sliderr
lack of sleep...nah, I think I'll blame it on Y2K
I think the major distributions should come together and create an organization. That that would hire superb technical writers to fully document the OS as best as possible. Doing it in man pages, and html, and run linuxhelp.com or something similiar. This would be a great way for them to give something back for the community at large and also improve their respective distro's by new users being able to adapt to linux more easily with less problems and negative feed back.
Or maybe a business idea here come up with a company do this and sell it to the distro's.
I think it's a great idea for all invovled.
like radio, nuclear physics, electronics or aeronautics once was, there's a lot of people who 'try out' but just don't have the prerequisites - about all one can say is, "Uh, have you considered an exciting career in the food service industry?" Boojum backing up stuff like there's no tomorrow.
The trick is, "newbies" need not just the raw information (use command X to do Y) but the reasons behind it -- and, more importantly, HOW to find out both the answers and the reasons.
I've spent several years helping friends, family, workmates, and others figure out their computers, be they Windoze, *nix, or other. It took me most of those years to figure out that, if you just tell them "Do X", they will, and then they'll be back. On the other hand, tell them "Do X, here's why, and here's where to find out more" - and preferably take them on the trip in the process - they'll remember. At least for a while - real memory takes repetition, after all, and if they're only setting up a new box every 2-5 years, well, don't expect much ;)
The point is, it's not just the docs. It's not just newbies being silly. It's also those of us willing to teach them - sometimes, it takes the effort of learning to teach first, too.
<RANT>
I've seen a number of posts here from people who say "nuts to the newbies... if that can't do it themselves, scr*w 'em". Or to that effect. Folks, if we want Linux to "win", we -- as the proponents of Linux -- *CANNOT* afford to take that attitude - it simply does not work.
</RANT>
-Strauss
Trifle not with Dragons, for you are crunchy - and go well with catsup.
Anyone who cannot use Linux with the documentatio there already is does not deserve to have it. And they are probably gay.
Great .sig Man!!!
Everybody Lies. But it doesn't matter since nobody listens.
My first real experience with a "real" computer was using VAX thru a command prompt when i was 13. The guy at the college computer lab laughed at me sitting there and told me about man files...THAT's how I learned...pouring thru the HUGE typewritten manuals (on ditto paper!) and just typing in commands...there was NO ONE to go to for help in 1984! I'm GLAD I learned that way..no hand holding...i jumped into the lion's den and came out unscathed..that's why I get furious when WIndows users (who have it made concerning documentation) download a program thru AOL and lose it! They have zero concept of the file system...and this is not the minority..I see this every single day...a million manuals won't help if they don't open it!
If you're not a Liberal in your 20's, then you have no heart.If you're still a Liberal in your 30's you have no brain.
Despite the fact that you are an obvious troll, I'm going to try this one more time.
Why is it that, if I think the GPL is a good idea, I am a member of Stallman's "cult"?
Now, in order for me to respond to whatever you reply with, the following conditions need to be met:
1) Your response must be written in clear, grammatical English.
2) Your response must not contain any non-sequiters (like "In that respect, yes, you have won" above which has absolutely no referent).
3) Your response must be free of slogans. (e.g. "GNU Public Virus", etc).
4) Your response must be free of flaming (e.g. "idiot", "fool", "pseudo-intellectual", etc)
What I'm looking for is the "intelligent discussion" you say I'm trying to avoid...
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I don't agree with you so I am a troll.
Who generalizing now?
I never said anyone who thinks the GPL is good is part of Stallman's cult. I have read your posts to Tom C. and others, and they are so devoid of original thought (copying text directly from gnu.org which we have all read), that that is why I think you are severely lacking the ability to think for yourself. To use an old line, "Some of my best friends like/use the GPL" They are not cult memebers. It is the way you behave, not what you believe that is your undoing.
What you are saying basically is that a newbie is stupid and needs Dr Seuss instructions.A newbie means NEW, not stupid. Stupid is stupid. Although lately 85% of newbies ARE stupid :)
If you're not a Liberal in your 20's, then you have no heart.If you're still a Liberal in your 30's you have no brain.
Usually, the problem is that people don't read the instructions and the first thing they do is complain. This is where newbies cross the line into lamerness (hmm... everything.blockstackers.com doesn't have a node for this. I'm too lazy). In these cases RTFM would be the best solution.
In the case of a certain unnamed ICQ compatible instant messaging clone project for *nix boxes that utilizes qt2.0, the instructions for average newbie installation were scattered across four outdated documents in obscure locations. This is such a program that lamers would LOVE to use, as this is all they do under their Mic rosoft environment. Thus this would be very necessary for their conversion to Linux (the light side of the force) to be complete.
Unfortunately, if we as the Linux community plan on winning this war of market share, we will have to make things easier for the average lamer (who doesn't RTFM - i.e. the average American). This is the "dumbing down" of Linux that many people fear. Developers can't expect the average lamer to search through four documents and problem solve in order to get an ICQ clone to work. The average lamer would say "Screw it. I'm going back to Windows. (cl ick)"
Lamer Linux(tm) is going to be tough, but I submit that it will be necessary if we are ever to ultimately succeed.
pppd[280]: rcvd [LCP EchoRep id=0xd magic=0x0] Dec 24
sent [LCP EchoReq id=0xe magic=0x719c668e]
rcvd [LCP EchoRep id=0xe magic=0x0]
sent [LCP EchoReq id=0xf magic=0x719c668e]
And I have looked but can't find where to turn em off and it fills up my logfiles at an alarming rate. :)
there was an old saying, 'Give someone a fish and you can feed him for a day - teach someone to fish and you can feed him for a lifetime' (or untill the lake becomes depleated but that's another issue) - the point being that if you just answer one question about, say, using shell wildcards, they'll just come back with another question about something else. A friendly rtfm might be to assist them in looking up the answer in a man page, a HOWTO or an O'Really book untill they become proficient of doing research on their own. Learn how to learn and solve problems on their own, rather than leaning on some 'guru' to spoon feed them information. If they don't want to do that, then they'll just have to pay Micro$oft. Boojum Backing up stuff like there's no tomorrow
We are a very high volume channel (over 10,100 users per day sometimes) dedicated to helping people with all matters Linux related.
Please check out our homepage http://www.linux-help.org for information about the channel and its rules.
You can also search through our bot "helper"'s extensive database using "helper ex keyword".
Hope to see you on IRC, Efnet #Linux's @Gnubie_
Hey -- Unix has a proud 20 year tradition to uphold of obscurism and difficulty. Even though this almost killed it in the early 90s, it would be an abandonment of princples to change now just when it is getting popular again.
Besides, as you put it, oversimplification and overautomation just lowers the market value of technicians and limits market share to those elite enough to afford your arrogance! That's why Microsoft is hardly worried about Linux, because you guys are totally predictable and ultimately will fail to produce an accessible system because the preoccupation is and always will be your death grip on shell scripts, awk, and obscure configuration files. Viva la Unix.
(A touch of sarcasm here, but basically true.)
It still does!
; )
**>>BELCH
I see, it was my posts to Tom C that made you think I was a Stallman-dittohead.
Well, despite your claim, I didn't copy any text from gnu.org. In fact, except for software documentation, I've never read anything at gnu.org. Obviously I have no way of proving that; luckily it's beside the point.
Now then, let's confine ourselves to those people you believe behave "cultishly". So far we have "respond similarly to GPL detractors". Is that really an exclusive cult phenomena? For instance, if I said "Oxygen is bad", I'm sure a lot of people would disagree. Does that mean they are part of some "Oxygen cult"? Clearly not.
So "responding similarly" (even the occasional coincidental quote) is not enough to prove a group is a cult. What other characteristics have you seen in these people to label them so?
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ok. i know it may sound harsh, but telling somebody to RTFM is a favor for the newbie.
i've used linux for years now, and i've received help and given help. on numerous occasions. here is a simple few scenarios that seem to be the most common ones:
1 - a newbie asks for help: 'i installed linux. what do i do now?'
2 - a newbie asks 'i installed linux and then windows, now i can't boot to linux!'
3 - an intermediate linux user asks: 'what kind of networking options do i have to enable in my kernel in order to be able to run dhcpd?'
it seems that the third question is the hardest one to answer, but in reality - person #3 would get his/her answer much sooner before the second person. why?
here is why. person #1 would be simply ignored, or sent to read www.linux.org, or sent to hell. answering the question would require too much time from anybody in order to be even bothered. unless it is your best friend, often the person never gets any answer.
person #2 will possibly get a quick & vague answer, something to the extent of 'boot to linux and run lilo' or 'rtfm about lilo'. why? again, it may be a simple problem, but it takes few minutes to explain what happened to this person, and help them step-by-step in fixing it.
person #3 would probably get a specific and valid answer simply because he/she asked a specific question, that doesn't require 2 hrs to explain. obviously they know something about the subject already, and if they don't - one may assume that they will read more.
going back to the problem of telling ppl to rtfm. it is sometimes a good thing. as we all know, the more time is spent on doing something, the more one will learn from it. by pointing to a specific howto, manual, or website, this person may be upset because of spending 2 hrs on finding the information, and reading about what lilo does, etc. guess what. i can bet ya that he/she learned much more this way.
i know people need help with linux. i do too sometimes; however, there is a very important thing to remember: i don't want to waste all my free time on explaining step-by-step things to a person who demands anwers right-now-right-here, and i also respect other people's time and effort. when i encounter a problem, i try to solve it myself first, i look in documentation, search the web/news for similar problem. then i try to find help more interactively: irc/news/web postings.
guess what. when i find the answer myself, i feel better about the fact that i was able to do it myself, and i know i didn't waste anybody's time. most important - i learned something from it.
so please, before you ask for help, see if you can research the problem on your own
--- d'oh
"- Most newbies do not read documentation. If they do, they seem to only skim through it and choose not to "swallow" any of it."
You are implicitly, even subconsciously, assuming that the newbie knows where to look and what to look for. If I don't know where to find the documentation, I certainly can't read it. Even if I know roughly where the documentation is, I may not know where within the documentation to go to, which means I'm going to skim through it until I find what seems appropriate--and if I'm a newbie who isn't too sure if I've found what I'm looking for, I may never find something that appears "appropriate," so I'll end up skimming through the whole thing.
"- They are often rude. Most newbies who have access to my phone number seem to have a lack of respect for my own time. Believe it or not, people have accosted me verbally for choosing to no longer help them. I just hate when they get offended when you choose not to help!"
If you give someone your phone number, you have implicitly given them permission to call you and ask of your time. If you don't want them to call during certain hours, say so. You may wish to give them an e-mail address rather than a phone number, since that way you can respond more or less at your leisure instead of being pressured immediately. (This assumes, of course, that they have an Internet connection in place, which may not be the case.) Bear in mind that if you tell someone to go away after you appear to have promised to offer some assistance, they may consider you to be rude, and respond rudely in kind.
"- They ask far too general questions. "How do I get on the net with Linux?". Of course, if you decide to help with this question, they'll get irritated when you start getting into the details of how things work. You see, newbies want to gloss over everything without having at least some fundamental knowledge of how things work. There are currently other great (and not so great) operating systems for people who do not want to get into these issues."
"How do I get on the net with Linux?" isn't horribly general, just goal-oriented. That's asking how to get from point A to point B. Newbies getting mad about you getting into details? If I ask you how to get from Picadilly Drugstore to Hal's Hardware, and you talk about how car engines work, you are 1) getting too detailed and 2) not answering my question. I obviously want a roadmap or directions. That's probably what you are inadvertently doing to the newbies who are asking you questions. The best way to handle it, IMHO, is to give them step-by-step directions, with occasional explanations of why each step works. Don't get too technical too early. What seems a mild current to you may be a riptide to them. The time for technical details is *after* they've got stuff working, and they are not in such a panic.
The problem is that the things that are old hat and second nature to you now are likely to be utterly foreign concepts to newbies. It is all to easy to forget that, and I think that that is exactly what you have done.
Dragonlance is cool...got a ton of books at home...but I've reading that line never clicked before...
Hi, my name is Jeld The Dark Elf
1. Go to www.deja.com
2. Go to advanced search
3. Search for jeld
4. Alternatively skip 1-3 and go here
5. Follow my example
To explain how to do part 5
1. Go to alt.linux.com
2. Find messages with = 3 replies in the thread
3. Answer the question if you can
4. While doing part 3 do not tell people to RTFM
5. If you break rule 4 include url for the documentation mentioned
6. Always post to both group and author's e-mail
7. If possible include your own e-mail and encourage people to mail you directly with questions
8. Repeat steps 2-8
Thankl you for your attention
Everybody Lies. But it doesn't matter since nobody listens.
Man, I love watching this!
I am scared though. I've been a MS user since back in the days of DOS. I currently use Win98 and know it pretty much inside and out. I've messed with unix a little bit several years back and found it rather daunting. I really am sick of Win98 being so damn unstable. I want to switch to RedHat but I'm worried about the steep learning curve and finding help with all of the problems I know I will inevitably run into.
It could cause problems with scripts however. Often, pass/fail conditions are explicitly grepped for, certain fields are used (a la awk), etc. Something like this would have to run exclusively out of a "user level" shell. Otherwise it may break stuff.
I'm afraid that the particular problem you describe, of X and SMB getting hosed up due to an IP misconfiguration, is an example of a very large class of problems which are simply too complex to expect easy, or at least readily available, answers to. It sounds like you knew that your IP was going to be changed, and therefor were able to resolve the problem rather quickly. I suspect you would have been down far longer than 45 minutes had you not known of this little IP switcheroo.
Perhaps troubleshooting tools and flows may help narrow down many problems, but such problems as yours which can arise in complex systems will always be very difficult to approach without having a pretty deep understanding of how the stuff actually works.
The car mechanic metaphor works rather well here: everyone knows that when the fuel needle is on E, you have to put gas in or bad stuff happens. and people know that if the oil light comes on, it's generally a good idea to add oil. however, not many people know what to do if you add oil or it's already full according to the dipstick, and the light still comes on. people that understand cars, i.e. mechanics, know that the oil light indicates oil pressure, not oil level. therefor they can deduce that the problem is likely to be an oil pump. if you don't know this, you're hosed -- your engine is going to run dry, seize up, and you will be exceedingly bummed.
so, the moral is something to the effect of: life is complicated, reading a book helps, but sometimes you need to call a mechanic.
nathan
*urp!*
IIRC, one of the significant benefits of Linux is that from a users perspective it's Unix. (At least that's the way it was for me.) I don't think most users really need Linux documentation, they can get what they need from available Unix documentation.
However, I have noticed a lot of fragmentation of documentation efforts lately with man pages, texinfo, howtos, html, etc. It would be SO much simpler if everything were in the man pages and they were up to date!
If the comparison is Windows/Linux, I think Windows in INTRINSICALLY much harder. Most of the complexity in Linux comes from applications (including X, etc.) rather than the OS itself. But it's easier to build up your understanding a little at a time, and also to figure out where the problem is.
There is indeed a *lot* of information. The most valuable skills a Linux gnubi can have is the ability to frame usefull questions/queries and the ability to filter through large amount of info to find what they need *without* reading sequentially, line-by-line. For example, I want to connect to my isp via ppp. Fine. I need to know about networking, but I don't have the time or desire to learn it all. I need to be able to mine the mountain of 'Linux Networking' info to get what I need and go. This doesn't even touch upon the fact, tho', that I also need to get my modem configured and detected, which involves forays into kernels, modules, and all that those things entail.
That's the toughest thing about Linux, the way one question inevitably branches into another, and another, and another. I think that's why a lot of folks lose patience.
Most gnubis aren't accustomed to thinking and/or working this way, whereas most unix/linux devotees were drawn to Linux in the first place by virtue of these strengths, fueled by indefatigable curiosity...
**>>BELCH
If they aren't aware of alternatives, then how is Linux better than Microsoft? And the end-result is just more screeching fanatics and advocates who will accept nothing other than Linux...
Slashdork doesn't just need better moderation it needs people who can tell the difference between "funny" and "whiney".
I've got users that still don't have a freaking clue how a mac works...and they've been using the damn things for 5 years or more...people like that never want to even try to learn...they just want to use, use, use...
:)
I prefer to "empower" them by teaching why/how stuff works, but I'm getting tired of flogging the same dead horse...at least there are a few users who get the light bulb when I explain something...I just wish there were more of em...light bulbs that is
What a joyous state when a "user" reaches zen and becomes one with the OS. I think that once a user learns the file system...the Legos all line up from there. Knowing where you are in your microcosm of user space is the first step in going elsewhere
If you're not a Liberal in your 20's, then you have no heart.If you're still a Liberal in your 30's you have no brain.
I think that a well written book that shows you the difference between Linux and the windows world. Say...if someone knows how to setup TCP/IP under windows, refer to that showing them how this is done under Linux. PS - This doesn't matter anymore...Y2K will kill us all!! -AC
...to jump in any time. 8^)
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For God's sake...Get rid of that threatening pelican. You need something a little less scary...like an inanimate piece of fruit, or something with nice geometric shapes and primary colors. Not some obviously deranged and scheming bird with a sharp looking beak.
One time I threw a brick at a duck.
It really not any more difficult once a "newbie" gets the build installed - that's the rub, so to speak. If you've ever experienced say, a BeOS installation (with or without partioning), you will see how a real installation should behave. The newer "Linux for Windows" builds like Phat, Armed & WinLin2000 currently offer the easiest way to experience, learn and use Linux without going thru some of the more intimidating stuff. Oh, and the idiot who posted "Linux should stay exclusive - we don't want trash off the street" - I hope your @#$&^$ system blows up!!!
We don't need more docs, we just need to make the newbies READ it. krynux
the documentation sometimes causes more confusion than it resolves. There are times that one needs to access the experience and knowledge of people who have possibly gone thru the same experience. Giving answer of RTFM without actually considering the situation of the requestor is just rude.
so, the moral is something to the effect of: life is complicated, reading a book helps, but sometimes you need to call a mechanic.
But does the mechanic tell you to read the friggin' user's manual? Does he treat you with disdain, or ignore you outright? Yes, it's possible he does, but you know what? You can go find another mechanic, or complain to this one's boss. There are alot of elitist pendejos out there who could care less that you're trying to learn how to use this OS, and don't know much about it yet, and that's what needs to be fixed.
Documentation is generally a Good Thing.. it directs you, gives you a new purpose in life. I think there already is too much Linux documentation.. newbie-wannabee's just gotta start somewhere.. that's what I did, anyway. And just don't be lazy. Read. A lot. It's out there (already).
The scariest thing for newbies is installing software packages. It's scary for ME. Hunting down all the libraries necessary to get something to run is retarded. The worst thing about Linux, bar none.
costs anywhere from $20 to $60 a volume. I own almost all of it, but I'm a professional. Why should someone just learning something as a hobby have to pay hundreds of dollars for the docs to a mostly free OS?
Disclaimer: I'm a tech writer. I do this for a living. Don't try this at home ;)
/etc directory? Great! Fire up vi and configure your system.
So, if you were to say "Hey, you, write good documentation for Linux", I think I'd run into a few problems quite quickly...
Which Linux? Red Hat? Debian? Which Desktop? Gnome? KDE? Some other? Is Linuxconf installed? Something else? Which editor did they install, if any? Are they on PPC? x86? Command line only or X?
The fact that Linux isn't just one thing is good in that it's flexible. Don't like the look of the GUI? Write a new one! Know every line of every config file in the
When it comes to documentation, though, the flexibility is a curse.
Be-all and end-all documentation for Linux is very hard to get your hands around. Even if, say, you're a writer at Red Hat, and you can just stick to what is available in Red Hat, you have very little control over what the newbie has installed. Maybe they didn't install Linuxconf. Maybe they didn't install an editor... Unless you can say for sure what the user has on his or her machine, you're left to doing glittering generalities, and hoping people can follow along.
One issue is the depth of UNIX in general. If you're brand new to UNIX, tugging on one thread of an issue can lead to unravelling a whole lot more than you want. Linux (and UNIX in general) doesn't layer complexity well. It hasn't had to, since up until now, it's been just used by experts whose day-to-day worklife revolves around the complexities of the system. A newbie would have to instanty grok a whole steaming load of info before he or she could do something like set up a Samba share. They have to learn about file permissions, networking, networkied file systems, potentially recompiling the kernel, configuration of Samba itself, the Sys V init process, etc. It's just huge. Yes, something like Linuxconf will help with this, but the number of things that Linuxconf could deal with probably grows faster than the Linuxconf people can put them into the program.
Another major issue is, simply, that documentation is always chasing functionality. In the case of Linux, the entire programming community has had something like 8 or 9 years to work on this stuff. Tech writers in the community are A) vastly outnumbered by programmers (which, actually, is the way it is software companies anyhow, but I suspect the ratio is much worse in OS) and B) dreadfully behind. The question of "where do I start" is overwhelming. Even if you can manage to document something, most likely the programmers have totally changed it, ported it to KDE, or some other thing.
Add to this the lack of a standard help system for Linux. As others have mentioned, there is no one single place to go for help in Linux. There are man pages... mostly for terminal-based apps, but a good number of X apps also rely on man pages. KDE has HTML-based help. GNOME, I think, may also use HTML. Other apps just have readme files. Many others don't have anything at all. Under windows, there is no question what you do: you make a standard windows help file. The search mechanism is built into the system. Every app (well, every major one) uses the same help system. Once the user has used help in one app, she knows how to use it in all apps.
In addition, the tools for documentation on Linux tend to be primitive. One of the major issues that have kept me from writing documentation for Linux is this issue. I looked into pitching in on OS projects at various times over the past several years, but tthe thought of hand-coding XML, or man pages, or some other thing really got to me. It would be like asking all programmers to code X apps using just vi and straight gcc (no make files, no gdb) and just the low-level Xlib. Yeah, you can do it. Yeah, it's been done. But it's not the way I want to spend my free time. I did try to code a man page for an Open Source editor app years ago (in fact, a version of it may be on your Linux PC right now) but just found it frustrating. Why do this when I can whip out documentation fast in a robust tool on another platform?
Another aspect is that documentation alone doesn;t cover all needs. Different people learn in different ways. RTFM doesn't help you much when your optimal ways of learning is through listening or through more graphical means.
Some days, I think I should track down an Open Source project or a writer group and volunteer. Other days, I think that people who really need beginner-level Linux docs might be better served by installing Be, or some other alternative OS which may not be as robust and flexible, but certainly can be easier to use.
If you really want to improve the newbie experience, you need really simple configuration tools for the stuff the absolutely can't be pre-configured by the vendor.
How many people install Windows on their computer, or ever even install a program that didin't come pre-packaged on the box? Not that high a porportion I bet!
There ought to be a few "simple" distributions for newbies.
That way all of us that like using complicated console commands can continue doing so! =)
Mikael Jacobson
Greylisting is to SMTP as NAT is to IPv4
I give the community a 10! :-)
My first solution was the Red Hat Linux User's FAQ which has been pretty sucessful. It's been around for about 2 years now, and I still get emails all the time from people who found it helped them solve a problem. Makes me feel pretty good actually.
Then a year ago some guy talked me into helping him develop a Linux knowledge base that was non-distribution centric. Looks like we'll be going live in a few weeks.
Point is that it's up to the existing people in th e know, who know what it's like to be a newbie to help them out. And not all documention is for newbies- there's still a lot of things that I'm still learning, even though I've been using Linux for over 6 years. Sure not everyone has the time or patience to build a fully database driven, fully categorized, drill down capable search engine powered knowledge base. But there are enough people like me willing to build that so that other people can write documentation of all lenghts and skill levels and have it easily locatable by the end users.
People interested in writing documentation or PHP coders looking for a challenge should check out The Linux Knowledge Base Project.
What, no man pages? -BSD Pete
I'm subscribed to a local Linux User's Group mailing list/newsgroup, and I think it's one of the best things in the universe. Whenever I have a question, someone can always help me, and I've always been able to resolve my problems. I do spend a lot of time reading the manual before I ask questions, but I didn't in the beginning...not enough, anyway.
WMBC freeform/independent online radio.
First, Linux man pages are only good for experts who really don't even need them as much. Second, why do they have to be so boring? AIX man pages MUCH easier for people who are learning and provides command and useful examples at the end of each. Linux could learn A LOT from AIX--simplicity without sacrificing flexibility. Next, we need all those HOWTOs that reference each other every other sentence to link to at least link to each other instead. But I have a much better idea--EXPANDING HYPERLINKS. My wife is a doctoral candidate at the College of Journalism and Mass Communications at the University of Florida. She's concentrated her various studies on the effectiveness of learning via computer-mediated communications. Some of her findings include that traditional linear text has better recall and comprehension scores for all types of readers than does paged hypertext such as HTML, SGML, etc.. It now seems clear that, while they can get to specific information faster, flipping through pages tends to moderate disorient readers causing poorer learning. My suggested solution is EXPANDING HYPERTEXT which she will be doing an experiment with in January / Febuary for her dissertation (Ph.D final research paper). My program (which I'm working on little bit little) uses a slightly extended version of Rich Text Format (RTF) for paged and expanding links. The expanding link simply insert the text from the linked page right into a designated spot (typically the end of a sentence). As an example, I make make a list of chapter headings as the first document. Each chapter heading serves as a link to subsections titles. Each subsection title serves as a link to paragraph topic sentences. Each topic sentence serves as a link to the paragraph. Words within the paragraph link to anything anywhere... By clicking on the links, you can expand and deflate greater detail where desired. Some of these links may even refer to previous chapters or paragraphs--which is good. Unstructured links are better for recall and comprehension. As a programmer I have to admit this is nice also because 90% of learning anything from tutorials is sifting through the BS and repetition for useful content. Examples are therefore often the best content to be found. Explanations and theory are secondary. --Matthew
Too many Linux 'gurus' have this 'If you don't know Unix then you're stupid'. I actually flamed some patronising asshole once for being terribly unhelpful and arrogant. I'm always helpful when I know the answer, and have received a few thank-yous for my time. That gives me a buzz, and advances the alternative-OS cause a bit more. Up with competition, down with the BSOD.
Instead of doing it for a person, tell them where they can find out how. Encouraging a person to look for themself is the way to get them interested, not just getting frustrated and doing it yourself.
Exclusive, but not proprietary...Not trying to be a troll...just noting an interesting paradox in the comment. Merry New Year!
Que Deus te de em dobro o que me desejas
[May God give you double that which you wish for me]
Direct them to a good book or web site, and they'll work it out for themselves and feel good about it too. I'm a relative newbie, but I've worked out a whole load of stuff by myself, and I enjoy it when I solve a problem (no matter how trivial it seems to the 20-year vintage unix guru). Give us newbies more credit.
I am a Linux newbie, loud and proud. Vitals: 36 yrs, liberal arts background, married, new kid; Specs: vintage 1981 programming skills (BASIC, FORTRAN 77); more recently, typesetting on a VMS for five years. Motivation: computers aren't boring anymore.
In June of this year, after farting around with the Cygnus tools and NTemacs on my wife's Winblows machine for a year or so and finding myself with a small pile of discretionary cash I purchase a very butch custom machine from Apache Digital <PLUG>outstanding service</PLUG> with Linux pre-installed. Everything I've read indicates install is easy and this is borne out by subsequent experience. The first thing I want to accomplish with my new machine is to change the name from the silly one assigned by the tech at ADC, so I poke around in linuxconf and redefine the loopback address to the obviously unresolvable name Darlene.
Of course an astounding array of services are no longer accessible at this point. After several hours of frenzied research in xterm, ls and lessing like hell, I figure out that I might try and recreate the config file as it once was. Like a bolt, I realize cat is the answer. I fix the machine and restore my failing KDE session without even rebooting. I take several things away from this 3am jaunt through my ext2 filesystem: a) MS would never have allowed me to do something so foolish; b) I would have been unable to fix such a blunder in MS without a reinstall, let alone rebooting; c) more knowledge about loopback and what it does than I could have gained from 40 lbs of doco; d) a total love affair with Linux.
I have since built a PC from scratch with cast-off parts, after generously volunteering to upgrade my wife's machine <GRIN/>, installed Debian without X and am in the midst of configuring it as a gateway/firewall/mailserver.
The doco for Linux is generally outstanding. The volume of docs for Linux is a problem, but also a direct reflection of just how much you can do with the system. The writing is generally excellent, much better than most other technical docs I've encountered. The bias toward technical detail again reflects the nature of the beast.
Just the opinion of a perfectly satisfied, completely insane Linux newbie/junkie.
illegitimii non ingravare
The very first thing that should be available is a explanation of WHY Linux is good and better to use than other operating systems. Put a warm feeling in their belly about the challenge they are about to undertake.
Second, explain exactly WHAT Linux will be able to do for them if they ride out the sometimes steep learning curve.
Third--EXPLAIN that there may be some difficulties along the way---and that these are not reflective of a poorly designed OS, but rather ________________ (fill in your own answer).
Then HOLD THEIR HAND. Acknowledge the fact that they come from a windows world and use pictures and illustrations that bring the concepts they already know from Windows over to Linux. Attempt to educate them on sym links, and file ownership before they ever see a command prompt.
THEN lead them into using the OS.
One site I find/found useful was searchlinux.com
It is sort of like Deja in that it is a usenet search; but it only searches linux-related newsgroups.
It used to be independently owned and the webmaster used to post interesting questions on the main page; it used to be updated at least 2-3 times a week;
unfortunately, CNET took it over around September of this year; and the main page has not been updated since; Sad, kind of;
but fortunately the usenet archives are still up to date
-----Transmission Complete----- If you want to email me...Don't
There were two brothers that we woodcutters. They lived with their father deep in some woods. Don't ask who they sold wood too, being so deep in the woods, as they sold it to the chipmunks, and were rather sensitive about it. Their father was a master wood chopper, and could clear a small grove in no time. He really enjoyed his life and worked really hard thinking of new and wonderful ways of chopping down trees.
.Soon he was well skilled.
The first son believed the purpose of chopping down trees was to sell them. He wanted to get the trees down and out to the mill ASAP. He sees how productive his father is, so he looks at the axe his father uses and goes and buys one from a nearby chipmunk. Unfortunately the axe is much different from his old axe, and he could barely swing the axe, much less chop down a tree. So he asks his dad, "Dad, How do I chop down as many trees as you?".
"Simple," replies his dad, "Practice. Go through a few months or years and you'll pick up on it."
This made no since to the son, as he saw the purpose of tree chopping as the chopping of trees. Why should he bother himself to learn to use the new axe when he could just use the old axe? It was so easy to do, and no learning curve. So he did the right thing and went back to his old axe.
The second son was the opposite. He believed that the purpose of chopping down trees was twofold. Firstly, it served the purpose of creating lumber, but also provided some sort of fulfillment for him. He looked at his father's axe and saw a wonderful tool that he wanted to master. He acquired and axe and tried to chop down a tree. No luck. So he picks up the manual that came with the axe, reads it, tries again, and fails. So on and so forth, for months. Try and try as he might, the son was not as good as the father, though he was becoming quite skilled. So he joins the local LUG (Lumberjacks Users Group) and asks questions. He discusses things with the other lumberjacks and made connections. But he was smart. He made sure he had learned all he could before venturing to the other lumberjack, who after seeing that he really did know some stuff and want to learn, opened their arms to him.
And they all lived happily ever after.
THE END
It goes on like this until at the end "Hello, world" has mushroomed into a security system that allows access only with passwords that are less than 7 days old, reports all passwords and their age on request, and records when each user last used their password. AND it checks for errors on file open/close operations and exits gracefully. You literally can't begin any simpler than this, but at the end you've got a lot of syntax you can work with.
A stroll through Linux could begin in the same simple way. What's the easiest thing you might want to do? How about get a directory listing? OK, show them how to use ls. Then go on to some of the options for it (not all of them, newbies don't care about listing in reverse order). Navigate to a different directory (cd, pwd). Create a directory (mkdir). Create symbolic links (I don't know how that's done yet). Explain the difference between a subdirectory and a link--this is something DOS/Win people will have no concept of at first. Mount a drive--and explain why it's needed. Now go on to opening a file with an editor--pico is easiest to start with because all the commands are right there visible. Then, maybe, go into editing configuration files.
The whole idea is to add information in small, measured doses so that your well-meaning newbie doesn't get snowed under too fast. Teach a little bit about a lot of commands, then later go back and fill in all the options you can use with those commands. Unix can have a learning curve like a cliff face if you've never seen a command line before, and the easiest way to learn it is to climb in short bursts with pauses to catch your breath.
Jenny
That's the biggest shortcoming on most man pages, and it makes a HUGE difference even when dealing with experienced users (such as myself). It's NOT enough to place the syntax at the top of each man page because "foo (time) [-aefh] (entry)" doesn't say what FORM we should put "time" or "entry" in.
/usr/src/linux-2.2.0 linux creates a link called linux pointing at the directory /usr/src/linux-2.2.0", then most of us wouldn't have made a mistake the first time around. Lots of other man pages are even worse in this respect, I've even grabbed the source code for some utilities and looked at the source code to determine what form it expects the input to be in.
Practical example: the man page for ln says that the syntax is "ln (source) (destination)". Of course, the "source" is actually what the link is POINTING TO, and the "destination" is the name of the link. Most people (including me) thought that it was the other way around, and made a mistake the first few times around. If the man page had an example section that showed "Example: ln -s
Conclusion: *ALL* man pages that refer to commands that take command line input should have EXAMPLES of it being invoked. I'm not talking about a "HOW-TO" level of explantation, I'm talking about another 4 or 5 lines of the man page. It makes a BIG difference.
In my opinion, the problem isn't documentation for newbies, its documentation for intermediate users.
/usr/bin instead of /bin.
[...]
Also, most documentation breaks down when the user wants to do anything 'adventuresome' -- more than just word processing, emailing, and surfing the Net. Its assumed that a "Linux for Dummies" (please don't sue me IDG) book is for Dummies, and that these Dummies are unwilling to learn anything that don't need to, that reading makes their brains hurt. But what about the people that do want to learn? Where is the documentation for them? I'm not talking about the "The Linux Kernel Hackers' Guide", "Beowulf HOWTO", or other high-end specialty topics. I'm talking about wannabe geeks that want to read clear, concise, complete documentation about everything they can get their hands on. Sure, they could learn everything by experimentation, or asking questions, but wouldn't some decent docs save alot of time and anguish?
Thank you for pretty much summing up where I'm at when it comes to Linux.
I want to learn as much as I can about why Linux is set up the way it is; what the directories are for, and why some executables are is
The man pages can be confusing at times, and to me most of the "Newbie-ized Help Files" at Linuxnewbie.org read as if the person using them has never touched a computer before.
The real problem with getting people to write documentation is that its not 'sexy' enough. People would much rather be playing Quake, or coding some killer app then spending their time trying to write interesting documentation on something most see as a boring topic.
I'd even help write it if I can find someone who has the information I want.
I really don't think that documentation (or its authors!) get the attention is deserves. So here I'm going to give a great big THANK YOU to all of the worlds Linux and Open Source documentation writers and the FAQ and HOWTO maintainers. You guys provide an invaluable service. Keep up the good work.
Amen. Even though I haven't found what I'm looking for yet, I have used some of the stuff that people out there have put together.
Jay (=
No, but he charges you $500 to change a couple of hoses.
Actually, I enjoy answering Linux questions! I reserve the 'Go read the documentation' attitude for people who should know. For example, take today. I was asked 'How do you change the mailserver address in Outlook', 'IS asked me to reboot the fileserver, but I don't want to, because I'm logged in, waiting for an AIM message', among others. These questions got the snotty response, because these people should know the answer from the mandatory training course, or because they have 'MCSE' in their title.
On the other hand, I responded gleefully to the dozen emails and one phone call I got today about Linux problems. The documentation, as you have said, can be unclear and out-of-date. There was a reason I was being asked; the FM had been read, and yet something was lacking. Linux users have the bad habit of reading the manual, and I have never had a 'stupid' (see above) question from a user that has successfully made it past the installation process.
You have my email, if you ever get stuck again, I will answer your questions as well.
.sig: Now legally binding!
funny...the mechanics near my home charge between $65 and $80 dollars an hour. I don't remember ever getting a check from a newbie asking questions on irc...
Clueless newbies are one thing. Ungrateful clueless newbies who believe you owe them something are entirely different.
Okay, I'll say it _one_ more time. I've been trying to tell 'geeks' this for what seems like years but they still don't get it. The problem is in personalities: the man pages and virtually every web site I've seen on Linux are written in a particular (and useless) style. This style is one in which the speaker explains things in broad generalizations, leaving it up to the reader to reach specific conclusions about their particular problem. MOST NORMAL PEOPLE DONT THINK THIS WAY!, but rather, proceed in an opposite fashion, taking specifics and generalizing them. (no, contrary to popular geek belief, this is not impossible to do correctly. It is just as prone to error as the other way of thinking. I've seen FAR more errors made when people try to reify or specify something than when people try to generalize a set of instructions). Start explaining things in SPECIFICS; that is, give specific, explicit instructions on how to do something. CUT TO THE CHASE! Be specific with respect to distributions (like Red Hat vs. Caldera- yes, it does matter). I can't tell you how many times I've seen an explanation of something where the writer refers to a file that he claims should exist _generally_ on all distributions of linux and DOESN'T (speaking of errors!) What good are 'help' files that refer to non-existent files!!!! Don't ask me for examples; I have dozens and I challenge anyone to find these files. Normal people will have no problem correctly generalizing your explanations if they are reasonably intelligent, even though 'geeks' don't share that same capacity. Like I said, it's about personality differences, namely, differences in the way normal people think and the way 'geeks' (autistic people?) think. It has nothing to do with intelligence, desire or hard work. Either 'geeks' will listen now or continue in their blindness...their choice. Oh, and by the way, don't assume I'm some dumb liberal arts major. I'm a physics major and have, through much pain and suffering, learned quite a bit about posix based os's. Most of that "pain and suffering" has come when I've had to correct invalid genearlizations made by 'geeks' over and over again-which is why I'm so pissed off about this subject. Time and again I've spoken to 'geeks' (usually in the math department) who talk big and understand very little. Their actual depth and understanding is viscerally shallow. One example of this is the current fascination with using Perl to run a web site. Anyone who advocates it doesn't understand the difference between machine code and a text file. They might _know_ the difference, but they don't _understand_ it. This disparity in what 'geeks' actually understand vs. what they think they understand is not unrelated to this personality diffence. Linux, and the open software movement in general, has great potential to debase an oppressive and exploitative 'closed source' industry but I fear the 'geek' community is selling it short with their attempts at 'documentation' and tutoring. So, yes, get some journalists to write the documentation but stop wasting my time (and the time of others) letting geeks do it. Peace
I have been working with Linux and other OS's for quite a few years now and recently became on of a very small group of Linux Certified Instructors. (SAIR, not RHCE) After ten years of field experience, I am now faced with the quandry of how to teach such an esoteric skill as working with Linux to Microsoft point-and-click thought processes. I feel that we can train these people on how to use this os that we hold so near and dear to our hearts, and still retain our "private club, members only" mentality. Of course the big challenge is going to be to get some of those old Unix freaks out of their closets and into the classroom so they can share their knowledge. Jon Duffee CNE,CNI,MCP,MCT,LCP,LCI,N+,A+ Yah, I don't get business cards printed, ink weight restrictions.. LCP=Linux Certified Professional LCI-Linux Certified Instructor (*Shameless Plug -- Contact your Local New Horizons Computer Learning Center for SAIR Linux/GNU Certification) SAIR=www.linuxcertification.org
...
As a technical writer, my perspective on Linux docs is that, in general, they are structured as reference manuals, with a great deal of prior knowledge assumed on the part of the reader. The usual way in which people master these docs is to study them religiously, perceive their interrelations, and eventually gain wisdom. The necessity of reading documentation this way means that a technical writer has not touched the material.
Technical writers' foremost concern is the user. Will the user understand this material? Do the instructions include all the steps the user needs to get the job done? Are there adequate illustrations to get the point across? These kinds of questions are the bread and butter of what we do every day.
We can produce reference manuals, which contain compressed, complete technical information. We can also produce user manuals, which structure this information in such a way that people of average intelligence and technical ability can use it.
What Linux documentation needs is better organization and structuring of the reference manuals, and the fresh writing of a series of user manuals.
When I see the average Linux documentation set, e.g., Dr. Linux from Red Hat, or the Yggdrasil book, I am amazed at the poor organization and mish-mash of topics that result from a whole tub of HOWTO's and administrator's guides being scrambled together in no discernible order. Dr. Linux doesn't even have an *index*!
The Linux documentation is living proof that programmers *need* professional technical writers.
If we weren't paid so poorly, perhaps some of us would have the spare time to take a whack at getting Linux documentation into the shape it deserves to be in.
A tech writing URL: http://www.stc.org/
"Imaginary solutions to real problems."
"God does not play dice with the universe." -Albert Einstein
Those who fail to understand communication protocols, are doomed to repeat them over port 80.
But people don't come to a mechanic and ask why their car won't run when they are out of gas.
;-)
/dev/zeros are getting 1's. That will be $500 thankyouverymuch." ;-)
Computers are still in their infancy when it comes to "mental penetration", I assume that the "what do you mean, out of gas?" question was something that mechanics had to endure for many years before cars where such a commodity that it was "common sense". We are still a couple of generations from that point in computers I recon.
And one more thing. If you are going to "convert" to Linux, BUY a distro. Or buy a beginners book with a CD included. That is the *best* way to get answers right away, and get help and advice on the bumpy road.
Personally I'd recommend "Learning Debian GNU/Linux" from O'Reilly if anyone is heading into that adventure. This is a linux beginners book mainly. But even though I have run Debian for some time I can find some bits of info in it. For instance they have a chapter comparing different Office like programs. It's far better than the GPL one from New Riders Publ. which I wouldn't recommend. Basically because it doesn't go far enough. It leaves you hanging after you have installed.
There are a *lot* of Linux books on the market today. For any distro, even Red Hat which comes with a fairly good manual IMHO. Instead of saying RTFM perhaps we should give the more constructive Read A Book advice. (Naturally, a specific book to read would be preferable.) Then you can read about devices, bootmanagers, filesystems and all that and not have to do it the painful way. (Which I did naturally.
One more mechanic metaphor: If you ask your local linux helper at least you don't get the "Ahh, sounds like the zerobitconverter is acting up. So
Many newbies are switching to linux because many of the companies selling linux have made entry easier than ever. Without companies such as Red Hat and Caldera, many linux newbies simply wouldn't exist. This being the case, I believe it is the responsibility of the companies driving this migration to provide more extensive documentation. Let's face it, if these companies want to profit from linux, they need to make linux usable, and improving the installation just isn't everthing necessary to make linux more user friendly. I remember spending a couple of hours trying to get the floppy drive to work when I installed Red Hat 5.2 a year or so ago (I never mounted anything on a computer before). And I still blame Red Hat for those lost hours.
Linux has several properties which make it difficult to write documentation:
1) Linux changes so quickly that documentation is quickly out of date after it is written.
2) There is so much choice in the Linux world that we have alot to write doumentation for.
For instance, I was leafing through my SuSE manual today. In the beginning they more or less have a section explaining this, and asks us to be patient. I began thinking about it as I read. They had many sections explaining how to do things at different levels (newbie -> advanced disk partitioning for instance). And they didn't even cover things like "how to use kde, or gnome", which is where most newbies will spend their time. Windows on the other hand can throw alot of money at "here is how to use the one and only version of our file manager".
The nature of Linux makes it hard! Maybe distributions can concentrate their documentation on how to use default installations, and leave the rest to us? I dunno. Difficult topic.
If I had no sense of humor, I would long ago have committed suicide. -Ghandi
then tell them to go away WE don't like your kind around here go buy M$ crap you deserve it you sorry no programming no comprehending lump of crap just leave before we scare you with technical words you will never understand!
...and becoming a competent user. I've experimented with many distributions, both Redhat and Debian derivatives for the past 18 months. It has gotten to the point where it is easier to install Linux than your it is for Windows machines. However, once the install process is done, there are three major issues, all with one central theme.
Issue 1: Configuration.
The tools for configuration are becoming better, but there is no one tool that can be used for everything. Linuxconf is a great start, but it does not include nearly enough, and so several other tools or manual editing have to be used to properly configure a machine.
Issue 2: Documentation.
There is documentation for almost everything I can think of. However, it is difficult to find what is needed, and often documentation is incomplete (being version or platform dependant) and/or out of date.
Issue 3: Program installation.
This is the biggie. It is very difficult to properly install new software. If it comes with the distro, it's never a problem. But as soon as I want to go on the net and download a new program, I rarely do NOT have a problem. Dependancy errors, configuration difficulties, and an overall non-uniformity to each install process. For example, compare a typical RPM package to installing Corel Wordperfect... or how difficult it is to install an RPM that has a dependancy tied to one distribution or especially one kernel version.
All three of these issues relate to the disarray and overall disunity of the different methods for accomplishing each task. I'm all for there being many ways to do things. What I want is that at least ONE of the ways is complete, organized, planned out, and just plain works.
I don't know what the big problem is. I am a Linux Newbie and have been running a RedHat 5.2 server since June of 1999. The things I do on it aren't particularly interesting or hard. MAN pages aren't hard to read, it just takes a knowledge of computers, many times, to fully understand them. They were not written for newbies. Many HOW-TO's were written a long time ago, or were never written for each distro's versions of whatever your trying to figure out. The problem with most newbies is, as I said before, they don't have much of a knowledge of computers, and they don't want to learn. Story:
Due to my own terrible forsight, I bought an Exabyte Eliant 820 tape drive and connected it to an Adaptec 2940UW SCSI controller. The Eliant 820 is a great tape drive, but I was trying to backup 13 gigs(Max) of PDF files onto a 14gig compressed tape. Oops. PDF's don't compress well. And of course my boss won't listen to any excuses of mine because, for some reason, he thinks that this wouldn't have happened if I had been using NT. Anyway, using nothing but man pages (in the beginning), I had my server set up, turned off all the unused deamons, xwindows running fine, backing up to 2 tapes each night, etc. Not bad considering my first computer was a DX2-66.
For those who can't stand reading off of a computer, I would suggest Red Hat Linux Bible. When trying to teach a co-worker(who couldn't even stand DOS) how to use that box, this is what I bought and suggested for her as well. Now she can tool around that system like a pro, or at least it looks like that to me. She may not be able to do everything, but it certainly got her off the ground.
NEWBIE EXTRORDINAIRE
Bar_Fight@hotmail.com
But nobody wrote to help solve the gateway box problem!
(I'm not either, because I don't know myself, and I'd like to do this too.)
I think the most efficient way for a newbie to learn is the self-experience, because there is no book that covers all or at least that thing that the newbie wants to learn more.
I didn't meant that a book wouldn't be bad.
Eduardo Burgos
First of all: someone should put out a more user friendly distribution. RedHat would be a good candidate, just call it RedHat Deluxe (can you tell I'm not in marketing?) and ship it as a alternate to RH 6.0 (or 7.0 or whatever). basically it needs:
1) Painfree installation. Windows 98 is surprisingly easy to install. Not that I didn't half to take a shower afterwards, but it's pretty simple, you don't really need any computer skills to do it. it configures most of the stuff for you, and when it needs your input it explains what each choice is. Mostly this is a support thing. If Linux can get enough support that it can configure most hardware automatically, we're in business.
2) No command line interface skill needed. it should boot up into a GUI when you press the on switch. There should of course be a command line option (either using a window from within the GUI, or by rebooting into the command line), but the user's first experience should be in a graphic enviroment, which is MUCH more intuitive. I hate to say it, but it'd be a good idea to have the GUI design bordering on copyright infringement, it's so close to Windows. i'm not suggesting that windows is a better interface, but it is what people know. To capture the less experienced used market, it is important to make them feel comfortable using the OS. People who hear about this OS off the web will not need this level of pandering, but people who are looking for their first or second computer (in other words, the majority of the world, and therefore exactly what Linux wants to selling to) will need to walk into the store, look at the display, sit down, and immediately pick it up. Accessibility is the key word today. Once the user is familiar and comfortable in the enviroment, the advantages of Linux over Windows or MacOS will stand out more.
3) More hardware support! If the latest and greatest isn't supported by Linux, there will be problems. I don't mean searching websites for drivers, i mean in the box when you buy your new piece of hardware there has to be Linux support. Obviously the programmers can't really affect this directly. It's all about how popular Linux is: once there is a sizable market for Linux products, the hardware companies will start giving big support for it.
4) More software support! To take it to an extreme: Linux must be so popular that MICROSOFT has to include Linux versions of their software or they won't get the profits they want. MS is the measure of success: once MS is putting out Age of Kings for Linux, it'll be obvious that the OS is really a success. =)
Some of these things aren't in the hands of the programmers, at least not directly. But once the market is there, products will follow.
Then again, I could be wrong.
I've nerver had a problem with the HOW-TOs other then some are out of date. That is easy to figger out since they should be dated or they might start talking about kernel 2.0.4 or something. The file naming problem is mostly with oRedhat. I use Slackware and for the most part it is "generic" and the last time i used Debian it seemed that way also.
I have to return some videotapes...
I had the same problem introducing computers to my 8 year old nephew and my 50 year old dad. Sad to say, Windows 98 does this well; there was a nice multimedia tour (done with MacroMedia director); which said this is a monitor, this is a mouse, how do you click, double click etc). For a real novice; we need that kind of a tour to introduce KDE or GNOME and going on to introduce other aspects of Linux. Ganesan
Good point... But when a newbie asks a too general question, you often have to explain how the thing works before you can give a good answer. The fact is that you can often feel that he is overlooking something because he doesn't understand the way things works and get together.
For example, if he tells you "I can't install Linux because the installer tells me I don't have free space on my hard disk, although I have plenty free space in windows", you'll have to explain him what is a filesystem and a disk partition, and possibly that he'll have to resize his windows partition and then what is defragmentation, etc.
In such cases, you can't just give him a simple answer, because when he'll come back to his computer, he won't be able to redo what you told him if he didn't understant at least the basics of how things fit together.
But well, I guess that a correct answer would be "I'll have to explain you how it works before I can give you a good response".
We need a brand-new version of linux to be released. It has to be so simple to use, that a monkey pushing random keys on the keyboard could operate the system.
You are right to cite the importance of an easy install. It is clear that the #1 reason why OS2 died in agony despite the Fiesta Bowl was that OS2 had a hard install. No one ever got far enough to figure out the #2 reason. When 98% of machines come with BrandX preinstalled, then the #1 step to BrandY getting anywhere is to have an easy install. Windows is as hard to install as anything else, but only 1% ever have to install it, so it doesn't matter. Anyone who wants to compete has to be 10 times better.
"...and one person wrote to say how all his troubles that are completely unrelated to using Linux as a gateway box were really easy to solve...." That guy is just 2 31337 4 j00!
"
I have to return some videotapes...
"... dear God...what has become of us..." -- I'm not sure but it is a sad state.
I have to return some videotapes...
How about giving all newbies a magic 8-ball program? :-)
"Will my -insert generic card name here- work with Linux?"
The Magic 8-Ball says: I wouldn't bet on it...
Knowing that ifconfig, route, netstat are somehow related to each other and to setting up a network would be helpful. GUI's stand in the way of this knowledge in many respects but often simply are frontends to these basic tools.
In fact it's best when they *are* simple frontends - no offense to coders out there but having a bunch of commandline tools whose names marginally fit with the task at hand ("interface configuration" -> "ifconfig") and then replacing them with even more unrecognizable names for GUI apps. For example a tool like "gecco" which maes configuration easier - don't get me wrong gecco is great app - but how is the newbie to know that they should type "gecco" to get a configuration utility GUI? Unless gecco's manual page refers to networking and gets picked up by apropos ... then typing "apropos networking" will point to gecco.
Every Linuxdoc HowTo should have a separate section that lists relevant programs and manual pages for the task. It should have a standard format. The Net3 HowTo (which should just be called the Networking HowTo for clarity) would have a long list but that's OK.
The ASCII text versions (or groff?) of the HowTo's could even be hooked up to apropros possibly
It's easy.
The manual pages are often the only way of connecting the orthonogal namespaces of "Name of Unix application" and "Name of task I want to accomplish"
Wierdly named GUI apps are making things no easier. And they don't always show up in a logical desktop location or menu either. Often the user needs to know how to install them properly ar they have to be part of a distro.
To be clear I am saying well written man pages that fit into apropos are still necessary and helpful in GUI land.
took the words right out of my mouth
It's not a windows replacement; it shouldn't be taken as one. What with all the little kiddos jumping on the IPO bandwagon etc, they certainly have a financial interest to make linux in the round seem like an everyman operating system. It isn't. Most people aren't suited to making friends with it- they don't have the time to invest.
This doesn't make them bad people- maybe they just have other priorities... In which case, linux based appliances, or things like the BeOS Stinger webpad, EPOC boxen, or even, yes, Wintendo and Macs might suit them better.
It might not be fashionable right now (in the middle of all the American goldrush hype :) to simply put all of this down to technological darwinism, but it's the truth. To learn a *nix, you really have to be willing to tinker, and play detective.
The most promising new linuxer I know is a part time musician and a pig farmer... He told me that he installed RatHed 6 the other day, and was wrestling with it cheerfully.. All he wanted was pointers to good collections of docs, software etc. I pointed him at the HOWTOs and the excellent O'Reilly "Running Linux" book (something of a godsend when faced with linux for the first time- wish I had a copy when I was struggling :-).
He seemed very pleased with that, and went back to configuring X, promising "I'll fiddle with it until it works". That just about made my day.
Linux was a minority OS for a reason. Few people have the sheer bloodymindedness needed to get the best out of a *nix..
There's nothing wrong with being a newbie, not at all- it shows that you're willing to try something new. What is bad is expecting others to carry you.
When the area isn't an easy one, you have to be prepared to put some effort in.. After all, people don't complain when they buy a burette that they instantly know the chemistry behind titration, do they? You don't buy a car and scream at Ford because you don't know how to drive...
Anyway, end of rant. Remember that for all the frustration caused by people who refuse to RTFM, there are many people quietly tinkering, and learning. How many people could resist taking a clock apart to see how it works, when they were little? :)
Why not boost my flagging chart position, by downloading a copy of "mindless thumping techno" from my mp3.com page? :)
The biggest problem for a newbie who used to windows, is not how the system works, but how the documentation "works". In the windows world, there is no such thing as a man-page or info-page or HOWTO that describes the overall concepts but help pages that describes how to answer a specific dialog. This is why windows users tend not to learn the concepts but the diteails, and then have problems when faced to new implementations. .BAT-files or programming. Instaed, show the user the shell, say that he/she only has to type the name of a program and press enter, and it will start. Perheaps tell them about the trailing & that enables them to continue using the shell while the program is running. But only if you are in X (If so, show them an example with some X-program, with and without the &).
This hast to be explained to the newbie, or he/she will be very disapointed by the manuals, and keep asking silly questions. This is rarely done, and that's from where a lot of the Stupid Newbie That Should Be LARTed - attitude stems.
Some people tend to show all the coolness of the shell at the first time, like if, for, while, background jobs, variables, etc. Do NOT do that, except from if the newbie is used to DOS
As a general rule - do not show any of all the cool bells and wistles - it will only confuse the newbie. Do not select a cool window managare with a cool theme. Select an easy to use one, with a dairly simple theme, like fvwm2 with the standard config, or e with the standard config. By the same reason, do not show them Emacs at the first time. Tell them it does exists, and is very powerfull but a little bit complex. tell them to try to understund how to use the other tools first. You may show them some basic editor like gEdit, and some text processor like Lyx.
--The knowledge that you are an idiot, is what distinguishes you from one.
Well I only use RTFM with people that have an understanding problem. If you feel like not understanding the documentation please give up on Linux, because you are probably too dumb to use it. Linux documentation and HOWTOs are very concise in contrast with Winzode help files (click here, click there, is the power cord connected?). There are books. O'Reilly has very good UNIX/Linux/programming books. No, they won't sell you a hologram or an interactive movie called "Installing Linux for Dummies".
For another view of computer documentation, try my article:
http://www.oreilly.com/~andyo/professional/reliabl e.html
Methods and Mechanics of Creating Reliable User Documentation
I think the best way to initiate new users into the Linux world is in a teacher/friend sort of way. I would say that I am pretty linux literate. I have set up several Debian desktops and servers, set up my own apache server, samba, etc. The way I got started was a friend told me about linux and how good it was (this was several years ago before it got mainstream attention. He helped me install slakware on a small partition of my drive. I would doodle around in it some times. When I had questions I would call him up, and he would try and help me, and with each new task I was forced to do with his guidance, I learned some. Eventually I broke the umbilcle (sp?) cord and started learning on my own. I just had to take the type to go though the process of installing from scratch and setting up each thing. I learned to do it from experimenting, reading man pages, howto's, and so forth. I just tried a lot and read a lot. The biggest helps were the linux users guide, sys admin guide, and net admin guide that I printed off the LDP, TCP/IP network administration by O'reillys, Programming Perl, the apache manual, the PHP manual, the python manual.... It just takes work and practice. But now I set up machines for my friend, help them when they have problems but try to help them learn. And I love helping. I think that is the best way to teach newbies.
When I first started using Linux, I was actually impressed by the huge amount of newbie material that was already available on the web. I could generally find everything I needed in about 10 minutes just by searching a little.
There is one thing I think could be improved a lot, and that is info about the .*rc and other configuration files. I think the information we need is already out there, but there is no (read I haven't found a) central location that references all of it. Maybe that would be a better focus than redoing it all.