Noobs?

falmarian · 2005-02-28 09:31:35

I, like all of us, have some non-geek friends. And even some geek friends with no Unix skills. Every so often, one of them wants to know what I spend all my time doing.
After a little bit of background in PERL, we ALWAYS get into Linux.
Then, there is the invariable Knoppix burn.
about sixty to seventy percent of the time, they LOVE it, and wanna get started with this Linux thing installed on their Hard Drive.
I am not going to give them an Arch disc and tell them good luck, but when they see how cool my system is (because they don't realize that theirs can look the same on a different distro) they always want to give it a try.
Typically I recommend Debian to them as a distro which will start them out in a safe, easy environment while acclimating them to the Unix Way(TM)
thent they can slowly take control of their systems, and eventually graduate to a system like Arch.
Anybody know of a better distro to put them on than Debian?
We're not talking about people who are going to be comfortable with Slack.
At least not right away.

cactus · 2005-02-28 09:44:25

I wouldn't go with debian. Hell, I halfway know what I am doing and I still don't like debian..
For someone new, I think it would depend on how they want to use it, and their general computer savvy-ness. For general users I would point them towards mandrake, or suse maybe..something nice and oohey goohey, but that they can get "underneath".
For more advanced users, I would probably, indeed, hand them something like ubuntu with its debain undercarriage..I don't like it much, but that is just me..let them form their own opinions.

As for non-noobish persuits, I have been meaning to give a BSD another shot again lately. Likely I will go with FreeBSD, as until DragonFly gets going strong, free has the "mindshare" of the BSDs. I have tried netbsd..kinduv hard to get rolling in that. OpenBSD I don't much care for.

ack. I have gone offtopic!

Benedict_White · 2005-02-28 10:14:00

I would give them Arch and tell them they will need to learn how to read.

Arch is the easiest distro out there.

(I have used Red Hat, Suse, and Knoppix.)

Moo-Crumpus · 2005-02-28 13:02:12

Benedict_White wrote:

I would give them Arch and tell them they will need to learn how to read.

Who can read will win!

GuyonAsm · 2005-02-28 13:12:20

falmarian wrote:

thent they can slowly take control of their systems, and eventually graduate to a system like Arch.

Lol @ graduating to Arch

dp · 2005-02-28 13:27:08

Pink Chick wrote:

Benedict_White wrote:
I would give them Arch and tell them they will need to learn how to read.
Who can read will win!

yep - survival of the fittest!

Benedict_White · 2005-02-28 14:01:46

dp wrote:

Pink Chick wrote:
Benedict_White wrote:
I would give them Arch and tell them they will need to learn how to read.

Who can read will win!

yep - survival of the fittest!

No, just survival of people who would like easy and transparent config files.

sarah31 · 2005-02-28 18:36:34

The absolute most import thing to mention is that if they want to use Linux then they will HAVE TO get their hands dirty. If they just want to have all ease of Windows or Mac OS but not the cost or secirity issues than they should just stick with Windows or Mac OS. No matter what distro you use the time will come that you have to do some serious tinkering. If they are not the type to tinker even in Windows then they will never get used to Linux.

I also would never push someone into a place I think that they are not able to handle. In the end if I don't have the time to help them and I don't think they would be able to listen follow the online avaible help site then there is no way I will set someone up with linux.

jerem · 2005-02-28 18:56:34

If they have really no unix knowledge then I strongly recommend they go with a mandrake/xandros/ubuntu/fedora then Gentoo (because of its awesome documentation, it is a good distro to learn how to use a unix system).

And when they are linux gurus, turn them to Arch so they stop complaining about portage being as slow as a 386 running HL².

Personnally, here is how I learned unix system handling, and I consider myself now as a really experienced user :

-began with mandrake 9.2 ( dont smile)
-had a geek friend running gentoo (and who smiled at me)
-installed gentoo several times till it worked(yes i needed several installs because of me being a dumbass at that time)
- became a guru (shorter to say that "advanced linux user")
- got fed up with compiling ever and ever
- heard of Arch on gentoo forums, looked in distrowatch, saw it was really nice on the paper
- tried Arch
- jumped from my chair
- never bothered of anything else anymore cause I found the perfect distro **

** although it lacks a package cd for those unfortunated users who do not have a broadband connection ( and yes I know you can make one yourself with gensync but im lazy)

Dusty · 2005-02-28 19:19:29

For the record, I've set up Arch on newbie computers. Basically, once Arch is configured, there is very little you (or they) have to do with it, it just works.

This works absolutely fine for people that just use the computer and never download other software. The only problem is for people that want to install software. You can teach them to use pacman, but it seems to be very difficult to teach people that they shouldn't be going to the home page for XYZ cool software for Linux and download and follow the compile instructions, they should use the package manager. (This issue comes up regardless of the distro. A lot of sites have rpm packages, but they never work anyway...).

Dusty

Cam · 2005-03-01 00:14:46

Gentoo was the second distro I ever installed, if you have basic reading skills it's so easy I don't think you could stuff it up if you tried. My first being Mandrake 9, now I use Arch and love it but wouldn't recommend it to any friends because I'm the only computer geek, half my friends don't even own computers except ones parents have a dual G5 PowerMac I'd like to "borrow"

mercy · 2005-03-03 21:26:08

My way to Linux:
dark ages of M$ - SuSE - RedHat - Arch

(and now 16 x RedHat EL - Server at work :-/ )

and i have to say.. SuSE was a rly good way to start ...

you didnt have to know *a lot* of it
it worked out of the box without lot of *root-interventions*
if you wanted to you could *dig a bit* into the *real* linux
provided a lot of posibilities out of the box (application-using point of view - not the optimizing-i-do-everything-my-self one
* at the time i used it you didnt have to care about upgrading/patching *longlong ago...*

summary: realy nice to start learning (for one who wants to learn *linuxing*)

then RadHat...

compared to SuSE you needed a *bit more* knowladge of the internal processes ... at least.. where the hell you find help/info/man's about something you wanna do
also right out of the box a realy stable system wich offers you a good way to *modify* your box the way you need/want it
with everything you may need/don't need

summary: takes you out of the cosy world of windows and drops you in the darkdark hole of agetty ;-)

last but not least... Arch

personally i installed a friend of mine Arch on his box at work cuz it drove me mad to reinstall Windows again and again cuz it got fucked up ...
it took him a while to get used to the "new look" - all in all he is able to perform all tasks he needs to.. and after 1 week of setup&introduction/teaching (damn cups+sambashareing ... e-mail, writing, painting, printing, browsing, paying musik/movies, using his digi-cam, reworking pictures ... simply works for him on click

and the best fact is... i didnt touch it since 2~ years :-)

cbozic · 2005-03-03 23:53:43

Although I think SuSE is nice, it's still an rpm distro with a fairly limited software repository. If you want to help a noob see why linux is better than windows, give them the power to install any software available to a distro and all of its dependencies installed with one or two commands. Pacman is great for that but I agree that arch might not be the best place to start. Often, noobs won't want to spend time reading through documents to get a machine working because they don't have to do that on windows. You need to give them something sweet to get started.

Go with something like Ubuntu or Mepis. I recomend Mepis because it has the worlds easiest installer and it's a live CD. Synaptic provides a nice gui to get any debian software they want and Mepis tends to work well with windows network printer and drive shares right out of the box.

I know there are other distros that provide some of the features that I listed above with little additional work, but Mepis is the best I've seen right out of the box.

Get them hooked with something sweet like all that free easy to install software that they didn't even know was available before. Then, they'll start to see why linux is so cool. ...Then they'll want to look for a distro that does just about everything well (not just eye-candy and gui installers) and they'll wind up right here with us on arch.

Shopko · 2005-03-10 18:19:28

sarah31 wrote:

The absolute most import thing to mention is that if they want to use Linux then they will HAVE TO get their hands dirty. If they just want to have all ease of Windows or Mac OS but not the cost or secirity issues than they should just stick with Windows or Mac OS. No matter what distro you use the time will come that you have to do some serious tinkering. If they are not the type to tinker even in Windows then they will never get used to Linux.

I couldn't agree more. For people who are technically minded, I don't think there is any need to "graduate" to Arch. It's really not that difficult to set up and use.

For Linux newbies, the problem is not that a distribution is "easy" or "hard", the problem is basic understanding of the principles behind the Linux OS. I would have them read a book like "Moving To Linux: Kiss The Blue Screen Of Death Goodbye!" Something like that will give them enough background knowledge to use Arch.

If people are really disinterested in how their computer works, and couldn't care to learn, then MacOS X is the way to go. It's easy to use and definitely more secure than Windows.

mercy · 2005-03-10 19:32:45

just to mention ..

Linux OS

linux == kernel .. not an OS

just for clearity .. so no confusion comes up

filoktetes · 2005-03-10 22:11:21

If you want to introduce someone to Linux, give them Arch. I have tried to set up Debian several times, but I wasn't able to make it likeable to me. It's very boring.
Arch is not. It has the big advantage that it works, and it's possible to understand how it works, and therefore, why it's not working.
As has been mentioned: If you give your friends Linux, they will very soon come to you for help. Make sure they have a distro which it's interesting to help them with.

mercy · 2005-03-10 23:02:09

hehe.. very good point

Arch Linux

#1 2005-02-28 09:31:35

Noobs?

#2 2005-02-28 09:44:25

Re: Noobs?

#3 2005-02-28 10:14:00

Re: Noobs?

#4 2005-02-28 13:02:12

Re: Noobs?

#5 2005-02-28 13:12:20

Re: Noobs?

#6 2005-02-28 13:27:08

Re: Noobs?

#7 2005-02-28 14:01:46

Re: Noobs?

#8 2005-02-28 18:36:34

Re: Noobs?

#9 2005-02-28 18:56:34

Re: Noobs?

#10 2005-02-28 19:19:29

Re: Noobs?

#11 2005-03-01 00:14:46

Re: Noobs?

#12 2005-03-03 21:26:08

Re: Noobs?

#13 2005-03-03 23:53:43

Re: Noobs?

#14 2005-03-10 18:19:28

Re: Noobs?

#15 2005-03-10 19:32:45

Re: Noobs?

#16 2005-03-10 22:11:21

Re: Noobs?

#17 2005-03-10 23:02:09

Re: Noobs?

Board footer