[plug] Linux training for home newbies

[Craig Ringer]

On Mon, 2005-09-19 at 18:24 +0800, Mike Holland wrote:
> Mr E_T wrote:
> 
> > The friend who wants to try linux is a pensioner and is having trouble with microsoft.
> > They expressed interest in doing a small course/training class to get to know it better.
> 
> There are vast resources on the 'net.
> Perhaps it would be good to run a half-day orientation course. First to
> give and idea of what Linux can, and *cannot* do, and then to give them
> a useful set of starting points on the web.
> 
> I believe that if people need more hand-holding than that, Linux is 
> probably not the best choice. Why do you want to evangelise Linux
> to someone like that?  If they won't buy a Mac, the windoze is the
> next best choice. NT/XP isn't so bad.

I tend to think that if an expert pre-configures a system for someone,
nothing is really "that bad" for most users.

I have users at work on every major platform, and frankly the majority
of them get by fine on any of them. Day to day use just isn't that hard
once you've spent some time and got some experience, unless you're
someone who has *decided* that it's all too scary / too hard / you can't
learn it, so you won't. I don't notice users being significantly less
capable on one platform vs another. Most don't move around too much (we
have different platforms in different roles - partly historical reasons,
partly technical) but some do, and they seem to do alright.

In my view, it really comes down to the administration tasks. To a fair
extent, if there's an "administration" task to perform, most users won't
have a hope without some help. I really applaud OS designers' efforts to
take "admin" tasks and make them into automatic behind-the-scenes
processes or at least make them extremely simple. MS did a decent job
here with WinXP (but to a fair extent forgot to leave experts the
control they still need and want).

Given that, I'm really not sure there's that much difference in day to
day use between a well-configured FC4 box, an well configured WinXP box,
and a well configured Mac OS X system. The main difference seems to be
the frequency with which someone needs to be called in to do admin tasks
- fix breakage / security breaches, install hardware that didn't just
auto-install, install software that's not a simple "yum install" /
"click the setup.exe" / " drag the folder from the .dmg ", etc. There, I
suspect Mac OS X wins, then WinXP and a good Linux variant come off
fairly evenly, but with failings in different areas.

> What the average person really needs is the fabled "internet appliance" 
> with firefox, e-mail and OO, remote administered by subscription.

Whenever I catch myself thinking that, I think about what the people I
know - family, workmates, etc - use their PCs for. Extras for various
people:

- CAD (a hobby boat builder)
- Accounting (most of them)
- Genealogy apps (several people)

and probably lots more I can't think of. There are quite a lot of people
who'd get by fine on such an appliance, but not as many as you'd think.
The problem is that once you start making it more flexible, you
introduce the same issues with conflicts, malicious code, maintenance,
etc that you have on a desktop.

>     Does anything remotely like that exist yet?

For business environments there is. I use, and really like, LTSP with a
tweaked XFCE4 desktop for this. Thunderbird, Firefox, OO.o, Acrobat
Reader, GhostView (the ad reps often need to view EPSs), our custom
booking system app, and that's it. If they want it there's more present,
such as the GIMP, but that's not visible in the very simple default UI.

--
Craig Ringer