[BadVista Advocate] Linux for Newbies

[Jacob Maynard]

And that's understandable, but even with specific distros, you can still
have different packages installed. This means that you would have to walk
them through setup first, then you can eliminate distribution specifics
there. Just make sure that all of the required libs are listed and how to
install them.

Recommending a single distribution is a good idea, but let's be realistic.
Not every newbie is going to have Ubuntu. My first GNU/Linux experience
was Red Hat 9. I will tell you that I had a horrible experience with it,
too. But my distro of choice went back to Red Hat with Fedora 5. I never
even touched Ubuntu. Red Hat was the only GNU/Linux I thought there was.
It was only after research that I learned about all of the different
distributions.

The reason I chose Red Hat was because they can advertise. No other
distribution has the advertising of Red Hat. This conversation can branch
a hundred different ways, but the fact remains that we will not have a
bunch of newbies all running Ubuntu. They will be running everything else
and Ubuntu. That's why distro specific is only a good idea when you can
make separate pages for each distro. Then, a user can select the distro
for instructions. It is a HUGE undertaking.

I have to limit how much I write here. Work frowns on this.

Jacob

> Jacob Maynard wrote:
>> I hope I can say this without sounding brash, but your tutorial, while
>> very nice in appearance and amount of information, is just another
>> tutorial. What needs to happen is for us to have a centralized place
>> with
>> answers to questions that are not distro specific.
>
> Information that isn't distro-specific is by necessity somewhat vague.
> Too vague for newbies to understand.  That's why I think newbies have to
> be directed to a specific distro at first.
>
> Matt Flaschen
>
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