[plug] Newbys guide

[Kev]

James Devenish wrote:
> In message <41FCBE61.9070402 at tpg.com.au>
> on Sun, Jan 30, 2005 at 07:00:49PM +0800, Kev wrote:
> 
>>Timothy White wrote:
>>
>>>IIRC HPFS is in the kernel. I'll check later.
>>
>>Don't you see you've gone and done the PLUG thing.  You're talking
>>right out of my league.  Under different circumstances I'd simply give
>>up and go away.
> 
> 
> Funny, my first reaction was to want to ask you what an "installable
> filesystem" is -- how are we supposed to furnish you with the Linux
> equivalent if we don't know what an OS/2 HPFS tastes like :-)

Well ask away.  That's what I'm expected to do.  But I promise to keep 
the greek out of it.  I'll see if I can answer you in 1 or 2 posts.  You 
already know that I can only spell "K" correctly 2 out of 3 times. 
Disappearing of into a maze of jargon is no good for a newbie.  Linux's 
devotees are passionate about how good it is, and I'm passionate about 
how much I DON'T want to join the evil empire, but I'm a non-techo 
newbie who just wants a working system for work and play and I in 12 
months so far I haven't been able to get one.  Now 12 months is fair and 
reasonable time to perservere.  Would you blame me for just giving up at 
this stage?

I AM NOT A PROGRAMMER, NETWORK ADMIN, DBMS, OPERATOR, TECHO OF **ANY** 
DESCRIPTION, but I have used a computer for work and play for about 14 
or 15 yrs now, and Linux is the only thing I've tried which I can't get 
going.  Note, I said "... I've tried ...".

> It's frustrating that "under different circumstances you'd simply
> give up and go away": if your dentist says you'll have to get your
> swizzdingle cleaned if you want to eat hot food, I'd hope you'd just
> ask what on earth a swizzdingle is. Hmm, maybe running a mile isn't
> such a bad idea :-) But even your bank expects you'll help them palm
> you off with "chequing accounts", "EFTPOS transactions", and other
> jargon.

This is a totally spurious red herring, and has no relevance to the 
problem of trying to get this fantastic OS up and running.

>>Don't get too annoyed.  I'm trying to add the passion to my plea.

> Same :-P

Still the same.