Self Introduction

[Leonard Young <lyoung@hawaii.edu>]

Aloha!  I am Leonard Young and work as an aquaculture specialist for the
State of Hawaii.  As a technical person in the office, i handle facility and
projects assessments/evaluations, permit advisement to farmers and
companies, development of policy issues and future planning for the
aquaculture industry.  In addition, i monitor online information and
resources, and maintain the computers in the office with my colleagues
cooperating or not helping ;).

My background goes back to Apple computers and CP/M until i switched to
IBM/clones and MS.  My experiences to Linux are limited to reading about it
as much as i could and taking the plunge to attempt an installation on a
desktop.  After trying myself for a month, i went to a user group with a
laptop and asked for help.  It took many hours and was not straight forward.
I used Linux for a little while for evaluation purposes and decided the
length of investment of time was not what i wanted.  I was still not where i
had to be as a user without devoting large amounts of time, which was
tending to be very precious owing to my heavier workload then.

What were my goals at the time?  I wanted to setup and use the
telecommunications tools built into Linux systems.  

What were the drawbacks preventing my use of Linux?  I found the
installation process very technical.  As an end user i didn't know much
about hardware and compatibilities.  I have a little more awareness now.
Information was diffuse and scattered, but could be found with much looking.
I did finally find Welsh and Kaufman's book published by O'Reilly and
Associates.  That was a big help.  And so was the realization of where the
software archives were located.  The last points of contention were the
reading of the manual for Unix commands and building/compiling
programs/kernels from raw code.  I found this a very difficult stream to
cross, but realize the potential for personal customizing of an operating
system.

How to attract more simple minded users?  I do consider myself a simple user
from the perspective of my experiences.  Make the installation as painless
and straight forward as possible.  Tell up front what hardware is supported
or work with a minimal system in-mind/assumed approach.  I suspect that as a
testbed, we may/may not have to make changes in our hardware to install
SEUL's OS kernel.  If possible allow for the co-existence of MS-DOS, or tell
us to start with a dedicated machine for SEUL.  Writing simplistic
documentation without jargon is important.  Often, i catch myself slipping
into jargon that loses my colleagues.  Then, i backup and start from the
beginning and draw pictures if i have to, in order to communicate.

len
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leonard.young@snserve.hi.net