Re: Newbie Idea

[jfm2@club-internet.fr]

> 
> Brian Wiens
> 
> 
> You have been doing much better than me in explaining what a newbie's
> interests are. A windoze box that will not break, easy to set up with a GUI,
> easy to connect to ones ISP, and have a few programs one uses for whatever,
> writing or graphics. Most users, the lowly plug and play type, which are
> over 80% of the computer users, want the computer to work for what they want
> it to do, they find that out after they have had one for a while because
> most buy one not knowing why or what they are going to use it for. Trendy, I
> suppose. Most do not do any poking around in the innards much less know what
> kind of video card they have inside.
> 

One day Linux will have users enough for manufacturers handling
drivers on a silver plate (or bankrupt).  This day you will not have
to know what video card you have, just insert the driversz CD who came
with your card in your CD reader and click on "install".  For now
Linux in this area is not as easy as Windows quite simply because you
have to do a job who is noramaly done by the manufacturer.  Note that
most modern Linux distribs including Indy (but it was not mine but
RedHat's work) will just look at what is on the PCI bus and select the
video driver for your card without you needing to know what card is
it.

About networking: quite simply no networking means no possibility to
call for help.  Rebooting for calling from Windows cuts you of
interactive troubleshooting through IRC and about mail/news you would
be describing problems from memory.  Being able to reach the internet
and have mail/news in working order is not only needed but crucial.

About servers that is another matter.  Samba could be of use at home
but..  Apache could be of use in case one day we put dynamic doc with
CGIs like in Caldera 1.3 (if one of the web designers ois redaing this
he should a look at the RPM).  An FTP server seems me realatively
useless for the people we target along with SNMP, bootp and dhcp.

> I know it is not going to be easy to convert them to Linux, too damn hard,

Just shows them what can be done with the GIMP.  Of course if you begin
telling them about free compilers and recompiling kernels you will
make them flee.

Also 0.2 will drop you into X and more precisely KDE so you could
spend weeks without seeing the shell if you just want to do Wysywyg
word processing and use funware.  Nobody forces mandatory to use the
command line (but in trained hands complex tasks can be done much
faster than withn any file manager)


> haven't the time or the curiosity to use a better operating system than what
> they have been told works fine and have seen all the programs available for
> what they have purchased.
> 

Linux is not so hard once you understand there are many ways to use it
and only one of them requires you learning the command line.  About
difficult installs that is not so much Linux than the fact we are not
majority.  But more and more PC manufacturers are selling PCs with
Linux preinstalled.

Finally even Macs are difficult with just electronic doc.

> Is there a solution to make it simple by dropping many of the files included
> in the distributions? Should networking software be omitted or worked around
> to make it simple?
> 
> I am still trying to figure out the filing system, what I need and do not
> need.
> 

The file system or the filing system?

-- 
			Jean Francois Martinez

Project Independence: Linux for the Masses
http://www.independence.seul.org