installation of Ubuntu 6.10

[Martin Visser]

Tony and the list,

I appreciate your frustration - sometimes our long-term experience with
Linux (and other UNIX like operating systems) creates a blind-spot.

One major difference between Linux and Windows, is that in general Linux
practitioners are not afraid of the command line, whereas in the Windows
world this interface is pretty well deprecated. The command line in Windows
is still there (just type Start->Run and enter "cmd") but is rarely invoked.
However I think that it is a shame. More often than not in Windows, if you
have a serious problem to solve, you need to navigate through dozens of
screens (possibly guided by a list of screenshots) clicking the correct
options. Sometimes if your environment doesn't match someone else's this can
become quite error prone. However if you can invoke some function from the
command line, it often is not context-specific and is usually quite
repeatable. Also an instruction to run a program from the command-line can
easily be read from a web-page and even copied and pasted. This cannot be
replicated through graphical configuration.

The problem you are finding is that when some ne says run "sudo apt-get
....." they assume you know that this means run it from the command line
(through the Terminal program). The problem I guess is that where someone
providing help should say "Run the Terminal program by selecting
Applications->Accessories->Terminal and type "sudo apt-get blah blah" and
type Enter followed by your password" we just say "Run "sudo apt-get blah
blah" which is a lot easier to type. Unfortunately the alternative (using
the graphical Synaptic Package Manager tool) is going to be a lot more
long-winded involving selecting menus and checkboxes and applying and
waiting etc. It is also prone to errors. So I guess those of us more
experience users are probably always going to go for the abbreviated
version.

So what's the solution?

Firstly, I would heartily recommend that all new Ubuntu users at least read
the first 3 chapters of the manual at
https://help.ubuntu.com/6.10/ubuntu/desktopguide/C/index.html (This is
linked from the System->Help->Online Documentation menu ). This explains the
3 ways you can add and remove application packages. I think that new users
must make the effort to realise that all computer systems are not Windows
and may not even work like Windows - and there will be new terms and
concepts to learn. (And don't forget the same thing needed to occur went
when people familiar with DOS went to Windows). And come to mention it, I
have being playing a little bit with Windows Vista at home. I found many
tasks I could easily do in XP very difficult to achieve in Vista without a
lot of  hunting - the transition here for even experienced XP users will be
quite daunting.

Secondly, I think that us Ubuntuistas need to make sure that we are clearer
when we articulate a solution.We probably should be very explicit as to how
to complete a task, even if it is a little painful. Or possibly, for
reasonably simple things we could illuminate your instruction with something
like "Install the following packages - "blah blah". (Follow the instructions
at http://somewhere.ubuntu.com/InstallAPackage if you haven't done this
before )". Assuming the instructions are clear enough there,  then hopefully
new users will be unambiguous as to what to do.

Hopefully this goes somewhat to clear the air.

Regards, Martin





On 1/30/07, Tony Brow <tbrow at tpg.com.au> wrote:
>
>  attn Simon,
>
> I opened Xubuntu, put in the Ubuntu CD. It started to load immediately and
> I did some partioning when the time came around. I did not reformat Xubuntu.
> Sorry I haven't a clue how to run Synaptic yet and have no idea what a
> 'meta-package' is.
>
> Everything seemed to work, except evolution, which is solved.
>
> One difficulty remains, for me a newbie ( and probably most newbies). One
> reads for instance: in this," use apt-get-------- whatever. BUT I ASK  WHAT
> AREA (S)do I go to? Should I not use 'synaptic' how do I use synaptic ? Or
> do I use ' applications>accessories>terminal' ?? If so, does that apply for
> most things ? is this part of programming ?
>
> I met with two people from Deception Bay this morning, and they found the
> same thing.
>
> Sorry, these are things that, maybe the experienced people in Linux have
> forgotten and assume every newbie knows a lot already when they get started
>   --
> Tony Brow <tbrow at tpg.com.au>
>
> --
> ubuntu-au mailing list
> ubuntu-au at lists.ubuntu.com
> https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-au
>
>
>


-- 
Regards, Martin

Martin Visser
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