Who's the Fedora user?

[Paul W. Frields]

On Wed, 2005-08-24 at 18:50 +0100, Andrew Hudson wrote:
> Greg DeKoenigsberg wrote:
> > This is one potential user of Fedora: Judy, from Arizona.  She sent in a 
> > letter to the editor of Red Hat Magazine that makes me weep inside.
> > 
> > What do we have to say to her?
> > 
> > --g
> 
> > 
> > Dear Red Hat,  I hope you will get this e-mail.  I am a single user
> > computer person.  I put yes down - so I could receive your e-mails.
> > To tell you the truth I do not know why.  Your main emphasis seems to
> > be on business.  I switched from Windows because I thought it would
> > be safer and healthier all the way round.  To tell you the truth I
> > feel totally lost in your system.  I cannot use my CDs that have
> > games.  I downloaded a game I had paid for.  No way could I get it to
> > work.  I wrote to Linux Game.  Their directions were like Greek, and
> > I only speak English.  I tried to download the anti-virus I use.
> > They have a version for Linux.  No way did I get that.  I looked
> > into your training, but that is extremely costly.  I have bought
> > books.  It all come s down to the fact There is little I am able to
> > do with Linux.  Mostly I would like to have a plug-in that works, as
> > to the fact there are many things I am unable to open, including some
> > mail, because I can find no way to do it.  Dear Red Hat - what are
> > you doing for us little people out here?  I am no further today than
> > I was the day this was installed.  Thank you, Judy D.
> > 
> 
> Greg,
> 
> I feel your pain on this one - here is someone who has heard all of the 
> good things about Linux and Fedora but cannot translate what she has 
> heard into a useable system for her.
> 
> As Jeff mentioned, he feels that he is in the 1% tail of geekdom which 
> will never be able to translate the tech speak into everyday terms.
> 
> Why don't we take this opportunity to ask Judy/Sue/whoever about the 
> barriers that she actually came up against - did she go to Google and be 
> over-run with the many countless options available?
> 
> One of the things people enjoy is belonging - if we could convince 
> Judy/Sue and perhaps a couple of other total newbies to 'reality check' 
> documentation such as the installation guide then that would be worth a 
> fortune to Fedora and the FDP. Emphasise that this is important to us - 
> it's obviously important to Judy/Sue to succeed in Linux!

I posted to f-docs-l with some suggestion about how to leverage this
into the Mentoring program but I guess the reply has gone out already...
I may contact her directly with an offer of help.  Although that doesn't
solve the problem, it gets us in touch with someone who can help us
(Docs team) understand what people want first, second, etc.

> I'm going to suggest a moving to Fedora from Windows FAQ for absolute 
> newbies, but I'm going to do this on the docs-list.

This is not a bad idea, and I think this should be more than just a list
of program equivalencies.  It would involve explaining what people see,
from boot to use case, that differs, and gives them the information they
need to understand the critical differences.  (Note that this is not the
same as, "explain everything about what they see and why it's different.
Normal users don't care, they just want to know where to click to make
things work.)