Anything for home user and not the technical one??

[Ariful Hossain]

On Thu, 2010-07-22 at 20:01 +0530, Parshwa Murdia wrote: 
> On Thu, Jul 22, 2010 at 8:01 AM, Marko Vojinovic <vvmarko at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> > Start with using the GUI apps, to get comfortable. Open Firefox and browse the
> > web. Use mplayer/VLC/xine to watch videos, DVD's and stuff. Use
> > Amarok/XMMS/KSCD to play mp3/audio CDs. Use K3B and burn a CD or a DVD. Use
> > OpenOffice Writer to write something down and save it as pdf document. Then use
> > Okular to open that pdf and read it. Use Dolphin/Nautilus/Krusader to copy
> > files around and get familiar with file system structure. Use Gimp to draw a
> > picture. Then place that picture on your desktop background. Open kcalc and
> > calculate 3*2, then take the square root. Open a text editor, and type "The
> > quick brown fox jumps over a lazy dog".
> >
> > You can do all this in half an hour.
> >
> > (N.B. I am naming mostly KDE apps because that's what I use and am familiar
> > with --- Gnome folks will give you names of equivalent Gnome apps, although
> > you can use either in both KDE and Gnome).
> >
> > Once you get the basic feel for this elementary use, you get to the first big
> > checkpoint --- try not to use Windows! Make Fedora the default boot choice,
> > and try to use it for everyday work. Sometimes you will get stuck, but try to
> > put a bit effort and you'll feel more comfortable after each problem-solved
> > experience.
> >
> > Then go to a bit more advanced level. The two most common things you want to
> > familiarize yourself with (things different from Windows) are CD/DVD/USB-flash
> > *mounting*, and the concept of filesystem *permissions*. Use google to find some
> > nice introductory text about these topics. Sooner or later you'll run up into
> > these things, and you want to know what they are all about.
> >
> > Then you want to learn some basic command line tools. At first you don't need
> > anything other than yum. Learn how to become superuser in the terminal
> > ("su -"). Learn how to use yum to look for a package and install it
> > ("yum list packagename", "yum search packagename", "yum install packagename").
> >
> > At this checkpoint you are able to successfully use Fedora for everyday
> > purposes and to be able to install new software as needed. From this point on,
> > it's all up to you, how much interest you have and how much effort are you
> > willing to invest, and in which direction.
> >
> > There's lot of literature out there, but the idea is to start using Fedora
> > *instead* of Windows for *all* everyday purposes. Once you get comfortable
> > with that, start reading articles on the web, books, HOWTO's, and so on. This
> > is the point where you want to start learning to use the terminal and the
> > command line. Then you will discover a whole new aspect of computing ---
> > remote logging, system configuration, scripting, etc.
> >
> > But go one step at a time, start small and build your knowledge with hands-on
> > experience.
> >
> > HTH, :-)
> > Marko
> 
> 
> Thanks Marko, your suggestions are really worth reading. I would
> slowly and slowly try to do this all. Meanwhile, I got (from my
> friend) a book of fedora 10 also, its something named as "fedora bible
> " but is for fedora 10, though i don't think that it cannot be read to
> grasp the concepts or know at least the initialization of fedora.
> 
> Regards,
> Parshwa Murdia

This huge thread reminded me the first experience i had with linux.  I
was a high school student and was excited about computers. After
vandalizing the default windows installation( things like deleting files
other then exe ones, as i thought the dont do anything.) one of my
cuisine gave me a linux cd.  After several failed attempts and
disastrous consequences (like breaking the partitions several times and
and erasing my metal song collections) finally i did succeed to boot my
machine and as alwasy x didnt work with my old graphics card. So i went
online from my dads machine and hooked up with one of the linux support
forums.  And i quickly got several replays.  But all of them suggested
that i was missing a kernel module so i should recompile it and other
fellows suggested several compiler flags for that compilation.  Back
then i had no idea about what a compiler is so i take machine to my
vendor and installed a fresh windows 98. I was happy typing my homeworks
in my office 97 suite and started thinking that i'm a damn computer
genius.  It was pretty obvious as my friends didnt know what a .bat file
is.  eventually i upgraded to windows me and xp. Things broke every now
and then.  Explorer got stuck and how wonderful it was when i used to
serf the net using IE!  I just took it for granted and  thought thats
how computer works.  In my first year at university i got addicted of
downloading cripplewares when i had a pretty highspeed net in my
dormitory.  So as expected my new heavy weight core2duo Pc got smacked
every now and then.  The best part was once in a while guyz from
computer science dept decided to have some fun and develop a small
visual basic viruses. and these little babys were invisible to most of
the commercial virus databases for long enough for guyz run for a start
up disk.  So i suddenly saw a cute little cd of ubuntu.  So i later i
found out linux changed so much from erlier days. u dont have to build
everything from source tarballs(Although now a days i build most of the
things. i also have a "LFS" box on my old machine). 
lately i gave up windows completely and started understanding how
malengineered are those windoze softs. 
Learning a new thing isnt that bad.  What frustrates me there is a
increasing attitude towards ignorance.  ppl just dont wanna know whats
happening inside these machines.  atleast the OS interface knowledge
will not kill anyone.  

And i seriously agree with the deciesion that  distros take about the
non free codecs.  Yes it will scare some users but atleast will try to
find why they are excluded from these highly polished OS.  The message
of Open source or free software should reach to the user.  We do need a
mass to take these idals forward.        


-- 
Freeburn
life in a NIX shell
Registered linux user #517617