Hi Deb,
On your book for newbies.
Here are some things I have had to figure out, most with help from various
sources.
edit file:
ok, many say, open your _finlname_ and edit it. duh, how to open and edit
it? Someone had written they use emacs, but when I typed emacs at the
prompt, no such command. So I asked in a newsgroup, and a person answered to
use pico, that was an easy one and probably was installed. it was. This is
so simple a thing, yet what I read all the time was, "edit your _filename_
and nowhere in the note HOW to edit it. That was very frustrating at first.
how to:
start x automatically if you did not install it that way, or how to undo
that if you did that when installing.
what is the login manager, how to make it automatic. how to undo it.
control panel configurations.
boot defaults to linux, how to change during install. or later, i read that
you just put the one you want first, but which lines to switch. there are 4
for linux and 3 lines for dos. confused and afraid to touch it.
mount:
mounting drives, how to do it step by step. Explain different drives
nomenclature, like hda and hdb and hdd etc.
how to run soundconf after the fact. Also configuring printers. (mine is a
network printer and uses IPX and I cannot seem to get it printing)
using the prompt within KDE (I found a button to do that in Gnome.)
how to manually start a different wm besides the KDE
some explanation of the different windows managers, and how to access them.
Fpr example, it seems you need Enlightenment to use gnome, but is that all,
or can you use just enlightenment without gnome? I am confused on these.
rpm's install vs upgrade, when to know which to do. what is forcing and when
to use it?
tar:
What do do with tar and gz files etc. how to do it, like I mean do you have
to be in a certain directory to do it, download it into a certain directory?
directory structure:
What do the names mean. If I add something, into which directory one should
I put it and/or does it matter? ?
scripts and aliases:
explain how to write scripts and where to put them.tell me what program I
must open to edit them and how to do it.
compile:
what is all this business about compiling? why and how to compile. What you
might need to have installed in order to compile.
downloads:
Where to get them, I go to the sites and there are many directories on each
site, with different versions of the files, so how to figure out which
directory to get stuff from for your setup. I finally asked in a newsgroup
and found out glibc works for Mandrake. Still not sure what all I would need
in a directory, more than one file to make the whole?
command prompt:
what all can you do from the command line and how. That is probably a
biggie. Some of you do not go to a window environment, so what *do* you do
there?
system management:
ok, if I am also the root, there must be some system maintenance that needs
doing. For instance, when I logged in today, it said at the prompt "You have
mail" so ok, I had to do a mail ? to figure out what my command options
were, and I did get to see the message. Something from cron telling me to do
something, which I ignored because I do not know what the dickens it was
talkking about or who cron is (yeah, I now know it is a program, but still
need to look that one up)
This is probably more than you expected, but all I can remember just now,
but I am new to Linux only 3 weeks old! I am very familiar with windows and
the dos prompt, though I have not used the prompt much lately.
JoAnn Elliott
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
-----Original Message-----
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of Deb Richardson
Sent: Saturday, October 09, 1999 1:48 PM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: [techtalk] request for ideas
Hi all.
I'm thinking about writing a "New User's Guide to Linux" (to be released
under an appropriate open-content license, of course :).
I'm hacking together an outline for it at the moment, and I would like
to know what you think such a Guide should include. Input from users of
all experience levels would be appreciated. When you started with
Linux, what stumbling blocks did you encounter? What did you find most
difficult to figure out? Is there anything that new users need to
know/should know that other docs don't address very well?
All suggestions, comments, ideas are appreciated.
If anyone is interested in contributing to such a Guide, let me know.
It will end up being a huge project, and if I try to do it all by
myself, it will take ages to complete. :) I'll release a draft outline
in the nearish future.
- deb
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