Re: Unidentified subject!

[travis dockweiler <akira@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

> 1) The Web
>  We must provide a spot on our web page devoted to new users (newbies).
> Provide links which show new users that there are word processors ,
> spreadsheets , games and other tools for the average person to use. Provide
> a means for newbies to ask questions or submit requests (not just a mailing
> list).

there are a ton of places on the www for that, unfortunatly most average
computer users don't know of any search engines. like a friend once asked me
where he could find a certain program, yet he didn't know how to look.
 i couldn't imagine the www without some sort of search engine..

> The average person does not care to get on a mailing list , they
> want answers. If the answers aren't readily available , they either give up
> or go else where. Provide a resource library or links to such libraries
> that the new user can use to gain a foundation on the Linux operating
> system. Many new users find the books that are available much to
> complicated to comprehend.

the best place for answers is easily, by far #Linux on efnet. ask your
question, and get a response, as simple as that, and now most distributions now
come with some sort of irc client, at least i think so. unfortunatly a lot of
people don't even know what irc is or how to get on it. out of all the people i
know around here not one knows what irc is or how to get on it. and if i hadn't
of told them about linux, they never would have even heard about it.

if you want to check out #linux, try typing "irc nickname irc.sprynet.com" or
whatever server/nickname you want to use. then /j #linux once your connected.
anyone else on IRC a lot? i'm on it usually every day. #linuxOS is also another
good channel. there's also #redhat, but it requires a key.

> That is why in part the "Dummy" books have done
> so well. We must provide resources that encourage the user to continue
> rather that give up.

i hate to admit this, but once before i was a dummy. i mean it's not the
instant you sit down at a computer you know everything, you got to learn it,
and the dummies books helped out a lot. seriously. i mean you don't need
windows 95 for dummies, god how hard is pointing and clicking? but DOS for
dummies is pretty much how i learned DOS. that's why a lot of these win95 users
out there will never use Linux: it requires them to learn.

i know there is a UNIX for dummies and i'm pretty sure they just made a Linux
for dummies. i've never really used books to learn it, mostly just from friends
that also were learning it at the same time, and from people on irc.

i remember when i first heard about linux, i had only been using a computer for
a few months, i was on some local bbs like 5 years ago, and someone said linux
was "awesome" heh. so i search for 'linux' on a bbs called the graphics shop
and came up with something, and downloaded it, i unzipped it, thinking it was
linux, but it told me just to log into this one site, at this time i didn't
even know what an ftp site was. so i skipped it. it's funny thinking that i was
once actually that dumb. not knowing what an ftp site was?! hahahha...

then a year later, one day when i was on aol, my friend my cosysop of the bbs i
ran asked me if i tried linux, so i'm like no, then he tells me how good it is,
but that it was a major pain in the ass. at first i was like afraid that i'd
fuck up my computer system if i used it. so i used the umsdos boot floppy
instead.

after trying to use it for awhile i gave up, and thought it was to much of a
pain in the ass to use. so i deleted it.

a few days later i'm like man why did i do that?! and reinstalled it and tried
again, but this time i put it on it's own partition, 250 megs thinking that was
enough, eventually i ran out of room, so i deleted it just to make more room
for windows stuff.

i've been using linux for about 2 years, and i believe i know enough about it
to get around and use it. but i still could learn a little more. the problem i
have with it that makes me not just it as much as win95 is that currently it
doesn't support my video card. and for awhile not even my sound card, but i
just bought a new one and have actually gotten it to work.

maybe i'm just not looking in the right places but i just had more more apps,
kinda like netscape collabra/microsoft outlook 98, acdsee32, ws_ftp etc. i mean
i really don't like to use just the command line stuff all the time, even
though they're pretty good.

and win95 also has a lot of programs i use everyday. and their isn't a linux
version for any of them.

maybe it's just me, but it seems like 75% of the people that use Linux hate
Microsoft. i know you'll all hate me for this, but i don't. i use win95 alot,
and yes it does crash but a lot of the programs just because they have the
microsoft name on them don't crash. Microsoft Outlook 98 has never once
crashed, and neither has works or word if you could believe that. the only one
i ever had problems with is win95 itself and ie4.

i mean win95 just crashes/dies randomly for no reason at all, i hate it. the
most annoying thing about win95 is easily that plug and play crap. i hate it.
i'd just rather do it the old way.

and somepeople believe it or not use their computer for games: alot. i do, i
have a ton installed, and well i'm always going to have to end of rebooting
into dos/win95 anyway.

linux may  have quake/doom/abuse/quake2 and a few others, but that sure isn't a
lot. i also heard one called golgotha was being published by redhat, developed
by crack dot com. but then if you want to play a game you are required to ftp
to this site ftp.blahblah.com and download joystick-modules.v1.3.54.35.tar.gz
or whatever, after that you need to get some certain sound driver or it won't
work. i similar problems with doom in linux. and all i wanted to do was play
the stupid game, not spend hours configuring it/getting it to work.

the average computer user in my opinion doesn't know how to resize their hard
drive/create a boot floppy and use fdisk to create a partition in linux. i
highly doubt the average computer user is going to ever use linux, i mean for
me to installed linux, i actually had to read like 5 pages of documentation, i
mean newbies don't want to do that, they just want to be able to type setup and
it's done.

you know...there is one thing i hate about linux users, they think they are
like total geniuses and know everything, or that anyone who uses win95 is like
a total idiot, and that they are better then everyone else.  i mean i use linux
just as much as i do win95 and that still annoys the hell out of me. like one
day, here i am asking a question, something that is pretty hard to find in a
manual, and i get a resonse like "rtfm dillweed!" and then they called me a
shithead. like god, i just asked a simple question. guess they don't like
people asking questions in certain channels on irc.

>
>
> 2) Meetings
> Meeting's must be at a level where the average user can understand what is
> going on. If that means having 2 meetings , 1 for advanced users and 1 for
> beginners , then we must do that. For without a beginner we will have no
> more advanced users than we have right now. If we fail to communicate with
> the beginners our group will not grow. The second option is to have a split
> meeting ,with an advanced session and a beginner session.
>

i don't think we need to aim anything to people that don't use it, or want to
know more about it. that's why it's called a users group: it's for people that
USE it. i would imagine. of course i don't know a whole lot about the group,
i've never even been to a meeting.  i'm not sure if you use linux now or just
learning more about it, but that's probably why: it's a group for linux users.
not a group to teach you how  to use linux, or am i wrong? well, not the simple
stuff anyway.

i dunno, i've triedto help newbies with problems they were having with linux,
but no matter
how simple you make it sound, it's to technical for them. like for example they
ask you how to compile a kernel
and you say type cd /usr/src/linux, make config, make dep ; make clean, make
bzImage then make install. and they say "that's to technical for me" uhh how
else are you going to tell them how to compile a kernel?!

i dunno, some people are just to helpless, like they don't know how to read any
documentation, like one person i helped installed linux, i talked to him over
the phone on what to do. once it was done, 5 minutes later he decided it would
NEVER support his cdrom changer, so he deleted it, and get this 2 days later he
asks me if i wanted to help him install linux, what an idiot. if you can't even
remember how to install it you shouldn't even be using linux, because further
down the road there is waaaay more complicated things.

i know this doesn't have a lot to do with the original message, but what the
heck, i was bored.