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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.
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!
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
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
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.
...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
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.
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.
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Linux MAPI Server!
http://www.openone.com/software/MailOne/
(Exchange Migration HOWTO coming soon)
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!*
But who in their right mind would want to inflict Unix on their mother? And why is this something that needs to be done? Different strokes for different folks. Until someone comes up with a really easy-to-use, fully GUI-based, Linux distribution, Linux is not suitable for people who don't want to hack a little. The problem-solving mindset goes with the territory for now.
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
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.
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?
---
Linux MAPI Server!
http://www.openone.com/software/MailOne/
(Exchange Migration HOWTO coming soon)
(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
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
Taken as a joke, that comment is pretty funny. Unfortunately, I suspect that there is more than a grain of truth in that little message.
Quite honestly, it's elitist opinions like this one that will help keep Micro$oft's sorry efforts the Operating Systems of choice for the majority.
The sad fact of the matter is that the average Joe User doesn't want to have to read through reams of manuals to get their computer working. They want quick, easy, 'sound-bite' (should that be sound-byte?) help information. They want the 'Press F1 for a graphically pretty' type of help. But most of all, they don't want to be met with derision and hostility from the existing user community.
Just my thoughts...
--
The gift of death metal does not smile on the good looking.
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
RTFM, for a Linux newbie (however proficient with computers they are) is extreemly frustrating.
:) )
Linux does take a little getting used to. I finally took the plunge on my home computer two months ago, and it was a scary experience for me. It is a vastly different paradigm than DOS/Windoze. It's scary to be partitioning a secondary drive, not wanting to accidently partition your primary drive (which still has Win95 on it, along with years of beloved data), especially when the partitions have names like, "hda1" and "hdb6" instead of "C" and "E".
I'm very fortunate that some people on IRC were willing to give me a few begruding answers. RTFM doesn't help much when you're not even sure where to start looking. Even linux.org doesn't help much when you don't know an XFree86 from a \dev\...
Now that I've used it a bit and understand some of the basics, finding help in the manuals is much easier, though it can still be tiresome and frustrating.
I wouldn't mind seeing some better documentation out there. It seems to me that the HOWTO's are a bit disorganized, and in some cases didn't cover topics I needed to read about. I figured with all this open-sourceness and late-night-labor-of-love coding that there would be plenty great docs overlapping every possible known linux configuration. Yet I had a heck of a time trying to find out what an error message meant when I kept trying to use X.
I like Linux, and I'd love to see it one everyone's workstation in every business and home and send Gates back to his mommy. Most people are afraid of it, though, and good support and docs is just the thing to help abate that. Anything to help alieviate the confusion would contribute to its success.
(As a funny side-note... The guy who convinced me to install linux promptly disappeared from IRC for a month and a half, until about the time I got it running... So much for his help!
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
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.
You'd be surprised. A lot of us _did_ learn Linux via available documentation at the time. When I was setting things up, I scanned the newsgroups and read all the howtos. It was rare I had to ask a question, because I could usually find where someone had asked it before, and find the answer they'd recieved.
This is not an impossible thing. Maybe it's impractical for many people, maybe it's undesirable, but it's definately possible.
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
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.
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_
Try searching on Usenet via any of its web-based gateways. Troll through your logs (/var/logs) to try and see what's going on when your connection drops.
Also, in keeping with your stated desire to have your linux box be a gateway and whatnot, try forgetting about X and Netscape for a while and just focus on dialup access, basic lan-networking, and ip masquerade or some such to share among several machines. Go to Goodwill and grab an old 486 for $20. When you can access your Linux box via telnet from your windows machine(s) (check www.download.com for some great free telnet clients for Windows), rip off the monitor and just use that sucker as a gateway and UNIX fiddling/programming machine.
**>>BELCH
It still does!
; )
**>>BELCH
"- 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.
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
I must take issue with the "programmers don't write good documentation because they are too close to the code". Programmers write lousy documentation for two reasons:
1. They speak English as a second language (okay, this is more applicable perhaps to my current job)
2. They can't write period.
Reason #1 is acceptable to me. I can't speak their language at all, so they're doing me a favor by speaking mine at all. Reason #2 is the overwhelming problem here. Too many people cannot write. Period. This extends far beyond coders; I recently reviewed an essay by an Art student which was almost unreadable, not for all the deconstructionist ArtSpeak, but simply for the poor grammar and spelling.
Okay, now I sound like a bad actor doing a PSA, "stay in school! it's cool!" But hell, take some time when you choose to express yourself, being understood is important.
As for the issue of being able to explain things in a sufficiently coherent manner for newbies: I would challenge you to always strive for this ability. You will find that it forces you to really make sure you understand the ins and outs of whatever technology you work with.
I say this having taught things ranging from ethernet autosensing/negotiation to how to click and drag a file. When you break things down to where you're audience can understand them, you tend to learn a great deal yourself.
*urp!*
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.
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!
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
Welcome to the cult of right-minded Linux users.
Down with the whining lamers!
"Cause there's 40 different shades of black, so many fortresses and ways to attack, so why you complainin'?"
Would it be too much to ask for you to stop bitching and start cranking out some of this easy-to-use code for "blind, deaf and possible [stet] emotionally disturbed farm animal"? Or are you too busy telling everyone how Linux should develop? I'm perfectly happy with Linux the way it is. Many other users are; many other developers are. What is it with this need people have to shoehorn Linux into one monolithic box? For the nth time: if there's money to be made providing an alternative to Windows, then some Linux distribution-maker will step in there; indeed, they already are: witness Caldera, for one. But don't expect miracles: Linux is Unix, and that isn't going to change. As an OS "anyone can use", it is not going to cut it.