[ale] Top Ten Request

[Omar Chanouha]

Who is the intended audience for this? Geeks just starting out with
linux, or "non-technical" users who just want an OS that "works" and
is free as in beer?

The reason I ask is because the two would go down completely different
paths. For example, the command line is somewhere the latter would not
care to learn.

Being a "computer person" people ask me to "fix" their computers all
the time. I used to get irritated by this, but now I love it because I
just install linux on it. In my experience these are the areas most
users have trouble.

1. Package Management
    Teaching apt or yum is good, but the general concept of packages
in a repository, rather than downloading an exe and installing it, is
where most new users have trouble.

2. Free as in Speech
    My friend got a warning saying that he was about to install
software that wasn't free. He immediately called me freaking out, but
after I explained his wallet was safe he calmed down and finished the
install.

3. Media Playback
    Most people are used to just using whatever player is on their
computer, but in linux there are so many options that it is hard to
guage which package a user will like best. Also, most don't understand
why certain media types won't play.

4. Wine
    Some people need to run windows apps, specifically online poker
fans that don't want to switch sites.

5. Support
    There is no number to call, you just tell google your problems.

-O

On Sun, Nov 1, 2009 at 12:51 PM, wolf at wolfhalton.info
<wolf at wolfhalton.info> wrote:
> Hi Y'all
> I am filling a list of the community top ten packages or areas of the Linux
> environment and I am asking for your assistance.  I have a Wiki set up for
> this at http://wiki.sourcefreedom.com/ and I have started it off with a
> couple of things: (this is a page from the site - probably internal links
> will fail from this email)
>
> ===Linux Top Ten===
> There are over 16000 packages available on an average Linux Distro. What are
> the top ten packages or area you would counsel a beginner in Linux to fully
> master.
>
> For example, I would counsel a beginner to fully understand apt-get and
> aptitude, because I am an Ubuntu user, and yum, because I manage a few
> Centos installations. I would probably also suggest they get a handle on the
> sheer quantity of distributions by going to someplace like
> http://Distrowatch.com I might even try to get them to see the difference
> between FLOSS and proprietary software work.
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