Re: [TCLUG:8945] Installfest was great

["Joel A. Koepp" <jkoepp@atlas.socsci.umn.edu>]

One thing I'd like to say about InstallFest relates to the expanding user
base. After a lot of watching, I ended up helping a couple get dialup
ironed out on their laptop after Luke had gotten things installed. I'm on
dialup at home, so I think I'm pretty competent at getting it working. 

But there was no phone line that I found where I could test it, and the
people I was installing it for were not going to be able to troubleshoot
it themselves once they got home. I was happy to help them, and I hope
Linux is a good experience for them, but I'm not at all convinced that
they needed it or would have the time/energy to expend on becoming
familiar and capable with it. 

This is not to insult them at all...but they didn't really understand the
difference between telnet and FTP, and that dialing up is a prerequisite
for being able to do these things. I found myself frustrated by the need
to get PPP set up within KDE, since that's what they would be using, and
my own familiarity with the less graphical mess of chat scripts and
/etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-ppp0 blah blah blah. Then the
business about scripts in KPPP...I did my best but there's no way that
they understood what was happening there and how to fix it if it didn't
work when they got home. The entire time I was trying to explain the
rudimentary facts of what I was doing (which I think is very important) so
they might have some idea of where to start should something go wrong
later. 

My point is that InstallFest reaffirmed my belief that there are people
out there who do not need Linux, and while I think that if they really
want it we should help them, it will be increasingly problematic and
time-consuming. Go ahead and put yourself in the position of having to
explain the difference between telnet and FTP (plus how to use them), and
then find that KDE does not by default come with a graphical FTP client
(which is what most Micros~1 users are used to). It's quite difficult. 

What they thought Linux would help them with was the husband's work at the
University. He apparently uses some sort of Unix environment at school,
and could get files he's working on back and forth. But if he's using
LaTeX (what it sounded like to me), he might be able to get by with just a
telnet session on some remote computer. They didn't strike me as folks who
were hoping (or expecting) to tinker a lot and learn new stuff. 

This is going to be a tricky subject to deal with for the community. Do
we:

A) Encourage anyone and everyone to install Linux, but not warn them of
the time and effort required to become truly competent with it? 

B) Warn people of these things and only suggest Linux to those that would
demonstrably benefit from running it?  (perhaps at the risk of seeming
haughty and elitist?)

C) Some other option I haven't thought of but which no doubt exists.


New users just don't have mental images and understandings of important
things like filesystem structures, users, processes, permissions, init
scripts, X, config files, the list goes on and on. I certainly didn't have
a handle on it all when I started, but I was eager to learn and I feel
very comfortable with it now. But I think these "mental pictures", if you
will, are what people need to be able to hit the ground running like they
can with Windoze. Unix in general has never communicated these things to
the average person on the street...and I'll just leave out the debate
about whether it should or not. 

I hope you all understand some of my frustrations with getting new people
on board with Linux. Feel free to offer comments, criticisms, suggestions
to go away, what have you. :)

Cheers,

Joel