Why so difficult ?
 

Into my 3rd day with RH 8.0 and it has been an unfriendly experience. Installation easy, dual booting not a problem, but thats where you hit a wall if you are trying to switch from WIN98 and are new to Linux.
You are now spending all of your time searching for this and that to help you set up.
Eveything now is a foreign language and changes with each query.

Now that I have vented, I will jump back into my RH 8.0 for I am not a quitter.



A man with money met a man with experience. The man with the experience left with the money and the man with the money left with the experience.

What? Redhat unfriendly?:D
I found things in RH a little frustrating at times but that was because I was used to Mandrake and SuSE:) But RH is a decent distribution once you get used to it.Do lots of reading:there's tons of stuff on the internet,on all the docs,howtos and man pages installed on your computer.Then there Linuxquestions.org;)
lynch

Reading is probably the number one thing that most "converts" aren't really used to doing. They want to click click click and then have something running. Linux is a little more in depth than a clickity click click (sometimes) and this will scare some users away. Don't worry about it, you will be a whole lot better off with computers once you get the hang of this "linux" thing, whatever it is :D

Cool

I could see a little confusion coming from Windows98, but I think RH8 looks and feels entirely too much like WindowsXP. Converts from Windows XP should feel right at home.

a little scary,
Jeremiah

To me, its not Linux that is difficult, its the people who think its difficult or make it more difficult than it really is.
*nix environments seem to make more sense to me on how they operate and work compared to Windows systems.

One of the things I didnt like about the default kde desktop icons on SuSE 8.1 was that they looked like the desktop icons in XP.Changed them to the kde hi-color defaults.
lynch

a few months ago i locked up my harddrive because i did not understand partitions and how to make them and all that jazz. I had only a 1.70 GB partition when i was done. I was mad at linux and my self for ever being so stupid for leaving the comfort zone of my windows 98 system. I placed windows back on my small but working 1.70 GB harddrive and forgot about linux. Then i got to miss the games, and the bash scripts and the command line options. I found a way to clear my drive and then "READ AND READ AND READ" about partitions and linux . Now, I have my mandrake 8.2 back up, my windows 98 SAFELY on a linux made partition, and everything is right with the world. Dont give up, just read anything and everything about the linux distro that you have. I mean EVERYTHING.

Linux takes alot of time to learn. You have to READ, READ, READ then READ more. It's a powerful system that you can do what you want with it as you begin to understand it. I think Learning to program especially in C is a great benefit to using Linux. But along with being a powerfull FULLY configurable OS comes a STEEP learning curve that takes time. But at the 'end of the day' I think Linux is for geeks and programmers who like to tinker like myself. You either will like it or hate it. I happen to love it. :)

Re: Why so difficult ?
 

Back to the good ol' using cars as an example:
You drive a car? You get into a 24-tonne lorry and complain that it's not like driving a car? Of course not - 'cos you're not driving a car! Driving a lorry is different to driving a car... sure you still have a steering wheel (I would hope :)), and sure you still have gears and three pedals, but the handling is slightly different. Using computers is the same principle. When you install Linux it's not too difficult, but the moment you try to use it's potential you then realise that you're not driving a car anymore (am I mixing my metaphores?) - you're running something a bit beefier and it takes a bit of getting used to! Linux is not hard - Linux is different but not hard.

Why so difficult?
 

Thymox

Thanks for the link, http://www.tldp.org.
This is the type of Newbie friendly information I have been searching for.

Thanks again!:)

I disagree, I think that the learning curve is not any steeper than that of Windows. I fully believe that RH8 is just about as easy to figure out as anything I have seen from Windows.

My opinion is "there is a resistance to Linux due to it being unfamiliar". Who really wants to step outside their "comfort zone".

And tell me where you can find an outstanding forum like this to solve your problems with Windows?

</RANT>
Jeremiah

I think that,with the ease of use that comes with the latest Linux releases(from the Big 3 at least ;) ),you could give someone with no computer experience at all a fully configured Linux box and they would be able to learn to use it just as quickly as a windows machine.If they used the linux setup for a month and then switched to windows they would feel stuck in a similiar rut as a person swithing from windows to Linux.:)
lynch

VERY well put lynch.

IMHO people switch over to linux with the wrong attitude. They switch expecting it to be just like window$ when it is NOT window$.

Linux is not more difficult, Linux is different. Everyone has been brainwashed (myself included before linux) into thinking everything should work the same as window$. This is not true.

When you switch over to Linux switch with the attitude that you are going to learn something new. And as always when we learn something new, there is a certain amount of challanges we face. Plain and Simple. \

I have used M$ since the DOS days and I tell you, with every new release there are changes and new things I have to learn. Linux is no different.

You just have to READ, and READ and READ some more. Knowledge does not come without a price.

My .2 cents worth.

david

Lies Lies Lies
 

Don't listen to them, it' all lies. Linux is hard, linux is impossible, linux is a pain in the backside. Honest!

:confused: :confused: :confused: :confused: :confused: :D









Nah, seriously though, (just to clamber onto my favourite soapbox)

Even a total tit like me doesn't think that linux is particulaly hard, but I find it can be quite confusing.

The read, read, read, comment is the best one - though I would suggest that you invest in a large box of headache tablets, because I reckon that after trying to read your screen for more than an hour is probably gonna give you an absolute mother of a headache.

I personally, hate reading off of my screen, it seems that the words go in my eye's and straight out through my arse.

It just doesn't seem to sink in. I can get by with a book, cos more often than not, you just remember what page you saw that important phrase or sentence, with those damn howto's and so on, you try and remember which one had the relavent bit of info that you can recall but can't find again.

Thymox threw this at me the other day, which in it's self, is an informative read, you print it, and it only seems to come to 3 or so pages. But if you try the links in it, they are absolutely mammoth. Enough to make you feel that your eyeballs have been skinned with a blunt razor blade (or at least had a handful of road salt rubbed into them!!!).

But, even a linux moron like me, gets a real blast when it starts to come together.

Dig you heels in, and keep at it, because if for no other reason, it's another nail in the coffin of micro$oft.


Oh, and if you manage to get a decent (patronising/idiot level) book please e-mail me the details so I can give it a go!

regards

John

I'd suggest a tylenol type medication (acetaminophen) since the headache won't really be caused by inflamation of any type, so a standard anelgesic like tylenol will be a better investment for eye strain type pain. Of course you could buy a few sample packs of Motrin and Tylenol to see which one works better for you in such an instance though ;)

Cool