On Friday 08 November 2002 21.39, Ben Rosenberg wrote:
* Anders Johansson (andjoh@rydsbo.net) [021108 12:12]:
->Absolutely. I clearly stated "for use by newbies". People who know better (or ->should) can use what they like, that's on no concern to me. But windows ->people who decide to try linux do not need to be exposed to things like that ->first thing. At the bottom of the learning curve they need to have tools that ->just work. And - at least mostly - that's true for SuSE's tools.
Apt does just work. But if someone doesn't read "How it works" and just installs the software then fires it off to update the system, remove something or install a pkg..without knowing WTF their doing.
OK, "without knowing WTF they're doing" would be my definition of a newbie. I remember when I sat down the first time in front of a unix (sunOS actually) system back in 1994. It was a very frightening experience. I had the advantage of meeting some very knowledgeable people, one in particular, who got me through the worst part of the initial phase, but it took me several years before I was really comfortable with the system. Now, I had a vested interest in learning more, partly because I was interested in computers, and partly because the comp sci institution I was at didn't have anything else. Windows users trying out linux don't have that vested interest and will turn back if they're faced with mountains of man pages for what is in essence a relatively trivial task - installing programs.
I have absolutely no sympathy for them.
Fair enough, I believe in advocacy. I want everyone to use linux.
I view it much the same way that if someone buy's a rifle and doesn't get lessons on how to use the weapon then shoots a toe off..they can't blame the gun maker..
There we differ. I do blame the gun maker, and the legislatures who allow them to manufacture guns. But that's way too OT.
they blame themselves. If someone does something without having clue one on how that thing works is just not showing much intelligence. It's very disheartening that we praise and reward laziness with tools that make us more lazy.
It's not a question of being lazy, it's a question of having a good place to start, when you're a newbie and don't even know enough terminology to understand the manpage of ls
I'm not saying that users should spend every moment reading documentation in constant tweak mode when it comes to their computers, but damn if someone is going to use software or any other product they should at least have a some knowledge and be able to read the screen when the program says " The following package will be removed. Y/n?"
Most people won't have a clue what "libgtk+" is or if it's ok to remove it. If you tell them "it's the basic library for the Gimp ToolKit" they won't be helped a great deal. Even if they should know what Gimp is most of them won't know what a library is, or what Gimp has to do with, for instance, nautilus. It's just too much knowledge to require from a complete newbie.
If they aren't sure that these things should be removed then n is the right answer until they know what it is that's going on. *shrug*
Which is likely to be never for most people.