I had to learn how to ask the question
 

Hello all.
I have been using Linux OS's of and on since 1996. I completely gave up on MS in 2006. I change out a hard drive in my PC and MS thought I should purchase a new site license, I did not agree with that train of thought.
I found that popping in a disk and getting Linux up and running was easy to the belief that "Nothing could be this easy". It really was. The learning curve was encountered when trying to make Linux Fly. I recommend that everyone new to Linux or anyone with a desire to do a bit more than e-mail, catalog some photos or music get your hands on a Linux command reference guide and learn the terminal. There is so much to understand and do With Free Open Source Software and there are so many ways to access, install and configure the available software. There are so many resources for help and trouble shooting all things Linux however, here's the caveat; I really had to learn how to ask the question to get an answer that worked for me. General question will get you general answers and rarely ever was the answer I sought found the hodgepodge of generalities found in forums or Google searches and the like. I learn to be very specific in my question and the answers were discerned with less difficulty. There are really answers or fixes for the questions I have had concerning Linux.

One can become perfect in something only after errors. With learning and experience one can attain the solution with ease.

It is easy to ask questions, but to get good answers you need to supply relevant information.

Let's have some fun and play devil's advocate. There may be a case for not digging too deep, unless you want to turn it into a hobby.

Unfortunately the deeper you dig, the more you wonder what the use is of asking questions. When you are stuck on something, again, even a good answer to your last problem starts to look like a raindrop in a desert. It can get depressing, but then you think of something you haven't tried yet, let me see if this works...

Still playing devil's advocate, here might be a couple of Linux postulates:
1) Digging into Linux requires a level of curiosity higher than your depression threshold.
2) The time spent trying to craft a perfect question would be better spent in more digging.

Yes, richielinux, you had to work hard at it to become better than just doing more than email, photos, and web browsing. Similar for Windows, you have to learn a bit to do a bit, and classically with Windows you also have to deal with the hodgepodge of pop-ups and potential viruses/mallware/spyware which can bring your system down. My son just wants to "play" games with his computer, his old one was 10 years old so he bought a $200 one at like Walmart, firstly the ancient online game he wants to play won't work with the newest technology, and secondly, within a day, he had a system problem where it was totally locked up with some form of intrusion-ware. He's old enough to deal with this stuff, I told him to get on the phone with Dell support and deal with them, because my only recourse would be to reset the thing back to factory. That's pretty much what he ended up doing.

I can tell family members about Linux, or advise them how to avoid things in Windows, but if they don't listen and they're all adults not pre-teens or school aged, it gets very tiring. I am so not cut out to be an IT person, obviously. People don't listen, they just want it to work an when it doesn't they want it to return to a working condition within literally 1/2 a second. That's the instant fulfillment generation.

Not saying that it's right that someone needs to become a rocket scientist in order to use Linux on a computer; however I do feel that it's a lot better now than it was many years ago with Linux, it is very realistic for someone to get working in Linux with very minimal effort, and then I do agree that if they wish to do more than typical desktop UI based stuff, they will have to put in effort; however what they can do with Linux versus any other OS is extremely broader in scope.

I started learning/playing with Linux with Redhat 5.3 (pre Fedora days). Distrohopped (and try to keep other machines to continue that as distro's die :tisk:) and when Windows 98 started to disappear, due to XP, I went only Linux for a bit. Then I helped a friend by telling him about Clonezilla I think (told him about several, but think that was what he used), and he gave me one of the XP licenses from his company as a thank you. (gaming purposes, one piece of software I never found a Linux equivalant for)
One thing I learned, was the terminology is different enough, that if I could figure out the term I was looking for, I could find the answer. Samba for me was an example of that and I set that up under Suse 9.0 (haven't used it in years).
Now, I am debating between that and NFS (going to put into another question) and wish I still had my notes in case I go that way. I know I can do it again, just going to have to relearn.

Linux allowed me to use my computers, longer, inexpensively and generally without having to know too much after I set them up, because I tended to use the same things over and over, without changing. In all honesty, I stopped using "linux" and just started using the computer as a tool and now I feel I have catching up to do.