mikshaw
Group: Members
Posts: 4856
Joined: July 2004 |
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Posted: Oct. 12 2007,16:17 |
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I think the post could have done without the "duh". No one wants to hear that from anyone but their closest friends.
That said, Don, you seem to be overreacting a little. It *should* be mostly obvious to anyone, even Windows users, that if you're downloading something you should read the accompanying documentation, particularly in cases where that documentation is displayed for you even before the download is activated. Then again, I've known many people who for some reason even go out and buy some potentially dangerous piece of machinery they've never used and still fail to read the owner's manual....so maybe I'm in the minority.
Anyway, Linux is not that difficult; it's just different. DSL may be a bit harder to learn than something like Ubuntu due to the fact that its tiny size prevents the developers from filling it up with lots of helpful newbie-friendly tools.
Additionally, most people who enjoy arguing about how Linux help is unnecessarily complicated seem to ignore one glaring fact:
In Windows there is *one* way to do things, so it is very easy for someone to tell you "click this, click that, click this next series of things, and you're done".
In Linux, there are many, many choices and different ways to accomplish a given task, and the decision lies with the user to decide which way is best for him. There are many different desktop environments to choose from, and none of them work exactly the same (what would be the point in that?).
So...what I'm getting at here is that the only universal way to explain a task so that it works regardless of what desktop or other arbitrary tools a user has is to use the basic tools that are available in every Linux system...specifically the shell and core utilities. Not only can this type of help be useful on any Linux system, but it also teaches you something that can be applied to other problems.
If you feel it's unreasonable to have to learn how to use an operating system that you've never used before, perhaps you'd consider PCLinuxOS or one of the Ubuntu varieties, both of which are designed to be more familiar to the Windows user than DSL, both are known to do very well at automatically configuring your system, and both include the tools necessary to click your way through just about any problems you might have.
And as a side note, I've never understood why so many people who don't even use Linux seem to care about how popular it becomes. Personally I don't, and I know many other Linux users who share this opinion. The only positive things I can think of that would result from increased popularity are an increase in hardware vendor support and a decrease in bad software.
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http://www.tldp.org/LDP/intro-linux/html/index.html
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