mike said:
But I find linux has such a fog around it, the reading material is
incomprehensible to me, the newsgroups only flame you, not that I can get
connected in linux; (they don't do linux courses either, and I do find that
instruction is very helpful, specially the guided blundering sort).
But I said I'm not prepared for a learning mountain, I'm pushing 70 and not
ready to tackle a life's work. But I have put out loadsa time and money on
mags etc, and blood, toil, tears and sweat... well sorta. I'm prepared for
moderate difficulty. And I hate being beaten.
But attempting the impossible is more depressing than ignoring it.
Oh, well, Fred Langa says puppylinux is worth a shot...
The Linux documentation is written by gearheads for other gearheads
and contains an awful lot of implied context. Books, O'Reilly and
others, fill in a lot of the context but, for me, still require a
certain amount of additional research.
Note that the "apropos" command is fairly friendly (as friendly
as anything in Linux is toward newcomers). Entering "apropos
<something>" returns a list of things that are (kinda, sorta)
related to <something>.
I've found the denizens of comp.os.linux.misc to be quite helpful
to a newcomer.
For simple questions ("how do I do <thing>") be prepared to get
replies like "man <totally-non-obvious-command>" ("man" is the
command that displays the documentation (such as there is) for
the command).
For more complicated questions try to describe what you're trying
to accomplish and what resources (disk space, hardware, software)
you have available. The more clearly-defined your goal the better
the responses will be.
If ( *when* ) you get stuck, describe the situation and the
unsuccessful steps you've taken to resolve it. The clearer the
description the better the answers will be. The denizens of
the newsgroup will be more inclined to answer if you attempt
to resolve the situation yourself before asking for help.
The learning curve for Linux is pretty steep. There are
several attitudes that seem to to be held by those at the
top of the mountain toward those of us who are struggling
up: condescention ("Why, it's perfectly obvious to the most
casual observer that <gibberish>. Put your computer back in
the box and return it for a refund 'cause you're too stupid
to own a computer"), curtness (one-word or -sentence answers),
and helpfulness.
One thing that hinders those of us with mastery of one or more
operating systems or other technical subjects can be likened to
the old-dog-new-trick problem. It's not that we *can't* learn
new things, it's just that we grow frustrated ("dammit, I can
get a zVM system running starting with the bare hardware and
an install tape; why does this <characterization omitted> thing
have to be so illogically designed and incomprehensibly documented,
where it's documented at all?")
Hope that this helps, and remember, it's just my two zorkmids' worth.
--
-- Marten Kemp
(Fix name and ISP to reply)
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