[TriLUG] promotions for installfest (info pages)

[al johson]

No, I wasn't thinking of writing a website ourselves (although it would be
neat to have a help page for newbies on our present website--but the simpler
the better remembering that beginners have to crawl before undertaking the
more esoteric parts of Unix such as the command line)--It could consist just
of links to other sites which would help beginners with the basic things
everyone wants to be able to do: install ALL the hardware in your computer
with special attention to that hardware which usually requires some help
from a Linux expert to get working (just referring someone to a list of
hardware that Red Hat or Mandrake claims will work, also doesn't work
because Linux enthusiasts are constantly making such lists obsolete, e.g.
some winmodems which now have Linux driver software available for LINUX!) ,
rip MP3's and play music CD's, how to burn CD-R's and CD-RW's, play DVD's on
your DVD player, connect to your ISP using the modem already in your
computer and what to do if you have a winmodem, setting up your printer
(yes, the distributions do this, but I've had some LINUX distributions which
would set up my Epson 740 printer but when you printed something the margins
would be off and I couldn't find any controls to fix them, or other problems
would appear), setting the font size and screen size for YOUR monitor so
it's one which is most comfortable to you--if you can't comfortably read the
screen you can't really get anything done!!, and let's face it it is more
difficult to change the screen resolution and make the screen fonts larger
in LINUX, perhaps others can think of things which sometimes aren't provided
after you've installed your system. Finally, what to do when some of those
1000's of Linux programs in your distribution just don't work (usually
because necessary software for them to work is not on your system for one
reason or another). I'm of the opinion that if a distribution installs a
piece of software, all the pieces necessary to make it work should be
provided as well, and I've seen too many cases where this is just not the
case at all. In short, think about the things that most ordinary people do
with the computers and concentrate of how to help people make them work on
their computer using LINUX.

As for just recommending books, keep in mind that the O-Reilly books are
pretty stiff reading for beginners. They're great for intermediate to
advanced users, but for beginners I'm partial to those picture books which
show the screen and show you exactly how to do something using the GUI.
CRAWL BEFORE WALKING has to be rule for beginning users.
       As for the O'Reilly "Unix Cookbook", I've seen it and I really
couldn't recommend it for a beginner. The problem begins with the title:
"Unix" (which enough to scare anyone off). Moreover, I'm not really
impressed with any of the O'Reilly books I've seen except for their new one
on OSX (the manual Apple left out). The sort of cookbook I'm talking about
would be Task Oriented---To do this simple task, you type this on the
command line. You don't teach all this theory about the commands beforehand
, you give practical examples and then point the reader to where he/she can
become more advanced if they so desire. Not everyone needs to "split the
atom" so to speak. Then the writer could discuss the variables and switches
available for just those commands, e.g. want to create an mp3 file use this
command and here's how to select the sampling rates. (incidentally, DOS had
redirection and piping and all the rest of it--but hardly anyone uses DOS
anymore so you can't assume people know DOS nowadays anyway). And the tasks
illustrated would be those which would be the most common tasks an ordinary
person would need to use. One of the first steps would also be explaining
how you can create a script file to run these simple commands including
variables. With all the talk of command line programming, I've yet to see
someone offer a script file to accomplish a task which could be copied onto
the Command line and run. I'm not certain, but I'd be willing to bet that
there is even a way to turn these command line programs into icons that
could be used on X-windows. Yes, I know you do it with a text editor (and
some sort of compiler) and the Linux community is divided on which editor to
use. Still both are available so pick one for beginners; they'll probably
choose the other anyway as they progress.
CRAWL,WALK and then RUN. ---Al  Johnson.
 ====================
----- Original Message -----
From: Jeremy P <jeremyp at pobox.com>
To: Triangle Linux Users Group <trilug at trilug.org>
Sent: Friday, May 17, 2002 1:21 PM
Subject: Re: [TriLUG] promotions for installfest (info pages)


> On Fri, 17 May 2002, al johson wrote:
>
> > Well this is the first time I've even heard about "info pages". All the
> > books on Linux tell you about are the "Man pages" and how to read them.
>
> Many of the GNU man pages say something like this at the bottom:
>
>        The full documentation for `ls' is maintained as  a  Texinfo
>        manual.   If  the `info'  and  `ls'  programs  are  properly
>        installed at your site, the command
>
>               info ls
>
>        should give you access to the complete manual.
>
> This is what we're talking about.  And one of the reason the man pages
> seem poorly written is because they've taken out all the godo stuff and
> put it in the info pages.  This is GNU's idea, but a bad one IMHO.
>
>
> > Actually, however, if the info pages are written as poorly as the Man
pages,
> > I'd rather have a list of newbie websites, because although you can find
> > these in Google there are a lot of them and some websites are obviously
much
> > more useful than others. Here again it's best to have someone with some
> > experience with these websites.
>
> Right.  I'm not sure if we should try a big push to write newbie websites
> ourselves... unless someone is very dedicated to this, they'll quickly
> become out of date, incomplete, etc.  Instead, I'd go for an annotated
> list of newbie websites, good HOWTOs, etc, that just link to the best
> ones.  Of course, someone still needs to committ to *maintain* that
> list... maintenance is the most important part of an effective web site.
>
> --Jeremy
>
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