What are the most common new Linux users questions? Have a mind to write a book
(May be even as Excellent as "Thinking in C++")
I just have a mind to write a free book to give every new Linux user answers for the most common problems. What are they? Should this book be as discriptive as possible? How much descriptive?
Your suggestions are appreciated.
Thanks.
PS: If u know good free English-teaching book... please, Let Me Know.

Do you mean just on this site. On this site the most common questions are, "which distro is best for me" or "which distro should I install?". If you got the skills, go ahead and write a book. Few questions though, how do you plan on distributing the book, online on printed format.

I'd say a big question comes from replacing their windows software. Like "Can I still use Word?" "What program do I use instead of _______". The blank could be a Family Tree program, DVD authoring software, music editing software. Outlook epress, Accounting software w/ full capabilities, etc. The list goes on and on. I'd say those are questions that even non-noobs ask to some degree.

Thanks, reddazz, benjithegreat98 (I'll take your notice).
I'm going to do it in htmls(Also all packed in one archive). Actually I have the first chapter which describes a bit how to partition HDD, what is Swap, how to use PM... and it's in Russian yet. But I think it's too hard for a man who didn't try Linux at all and avarage win-user who can only double click a desktop shortcut. I don't know how to describe them the basics. Should I describe how to assign CD-ROM as a first boot device? I'm overwhelmed with these "easy" questions.
Every suggestion and help are appreciated.
Thanks.

____

One of the biggest hurdles for me was understanding mounting of hard drives/cdroms/usb devices, as well as how you could create a directory and then have a drive/partition map to that via fstab. Having been a DOS/Windows user for almost my entire computing life (except for a couple years of Commodore experience back in the early 80's ), that really threw me for a loop. Now, is that one of the most common questions for new users? I'm not sure, but based upon what I've read in this forum, almost all of my questions have been asked at one time or another by someone else, so I'd say that my "newbie" experiences match pretty closely with most other people's....

Just my 2 cents

What's a distro?
Which distro is best?
How do I download one?
My CD is borked (I burnt it as a file rather than a bootable image)
Disk partitions? Aigh!
What are accounts? Root?
How do I access my removable drives as normal user?
What are 'permissions'?
My sound doesn't work.
How do I make my scroll wheel work?
Why's Linux broken - all I've got is a blinking cursor? (aka How do I start X)
What's the difference between a window manager and desktop environment?
Which window manager is best?
Which desktop environment is best?
How do I switch window manager/desktop environment?
Will Windows apps run on Linux?
How do I install software?
How do I compile from source?
My hard drive's full, what's wrong?


And a zillion more. And last, but definitely not least:

WHAT'S THAT COOL THING IN THIS SCREENSHOT?

GKRELLM!

1) Limewire doesn't work!!!!!!!!!!!!!

2) Wine doesn't work!!!!!!!!!

and yes... they aren't technically even questions. i love newbies.

but "the thing in the screenshot" is normally superkaramba these days... gkrellm doesn't cut it for newbies these days.

a couple more:

How do I get a winmodem working?
How do I allow user to dial out?

------------------------------
Steve Stites

nah, not these days... i've seen the number of winmodem questions fall through the floor. which was good for me.. i always sucked with those bits of junk.

Huh, come to think of it, you're right. I haven't seen the gkrellm question as much lately. Along with superkaramba I have seen a lot of 'Can't get gdesklets to work!!' recently. Still the 'thing in the screenshot' question is up there, whatever 'thing' people are after.

Thanks, pnellesen, digiot, acid_kewpie, jailbait for useful suggestions.
Thanks again.
Any other common problem is appreciated.
Thanks.

Does anyone else have anything to add?
Thanks.
[Work is in progress]

Why are my hard drives so slow, how do I enable DMA?
Unable to mount my flash drive!?
Unable to mount my CD-ROM drive!?
Install from a tarball?
How to set the default font for X applications?
How to set the default font for GTK/GTK2 applications?
Where did all my RAM go!?!?

lets see....

what's the best distro? ...like there could be an answer for that. it's like asking what's the best colour.

where did all my memory go? heh, this isn't kansas (windows) anymore dorthy.

wine won't run x, y or z. yup, and probably never will. dual boot or get a playstation.