Brigitte wrote:
>
> Personally I think there is a missing link for those of us who are
not as
> computer literate as most of the people on this list. My frustration
is
> that most Linux installs rely on the user having Windows
> installed. Why? Is there a distribution of Linux available which
will
> allow you 1st to just install what is needed to operate the system,
and
> then guide you through a logical progression of learning the system?
I just
> don't want to install thousands of programs when I have no clue what
they
> do and how to use them. Any suggestions of how a true novice to Linux
> should approach learning the system would be greatly appreciated.
> Brigitte
>
Most distributions have some sort of basic install, where you just
install the OS, the graphical user interface, and a couple of programs
like StarOffice. I would recomend doing that and then installing stuff
as you go along. This way you'll know what's on your system, why and -
when you don't need it anymore - how/where to uninstall it. It'll give
you the oportunity to learn the things you need, as you go, at your own
pace (why learn how to network when you only have one computer that you
only check your e-mail and write papers with? Why learn security when
all you have is a 486 without a connection to the outside world, used
for nothing but playing cheap games? Why learn programming when all you
want to do is make a couple of cron jobs?). Unfortunatelly this is the
downside of Open Source: There's Too much stuff! The bounty of choice is
Bleep'n HUGE!!! In short, if you want a somewhat barebones system you
can go with most distros, which will give you the basic functionality.
Just install the default stuff and go. At this point, distros don't
realy matter, though you will be "locked in" to your distro because
you'll be familiar with it's tools (to that end, I recomend you try out
Progeny/Stormix if you can. It really is a good, light and useful distro
with great upgradability). This will probably install the Graphical User
Interface and it's front ends. Some distros will be as small as 500mb,
GUI and all (Corel), some as large as 800+mb, GUI and all (SuSE,
Mandrake). Most will fall in that higher range. This way you'll have
basic functionality, to the point where yo might not even NEED to add
new software (but you'll want to ;), all the while letting you learn
what yo need at your own pace, from whatever level you're at. Trust me,
when I started I didn't know much about computers in general either. I
just knew what I thought was easy. I thought Macs were easy. I thought
windows was... well, a pain. Not that easy, actually. But that's what I
thought. The I started with GNU/Linux and - strangely enough - I thought
Window Maker was easy!! Small, fast, and had everything I needed right
there! Well, I also thought running arround as root all the time was a
good thing... OOPS!! Learned that one pretty quick.
Moral of the story: start small, build from there. Trust me, you'll get
it. Reading helps, too (this is why I spend almost every sunday night at
BN sipping on a Frappuccino, reading whatever I can get my hands on,
though as of late the BN in brandon has been REAL skim on the GNU/Linux
books. Oh well, I need to lear more LDAP anyways... anyone got any good
recomendations? Paper or on-line?
I certainly hope this helped. And please, keep asking ;)
Norb
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