Contributors wanted for new HOWTO/advocacy site

Havin_it · 09-18-2005, 07:24 AM

Hi,

I have posted here on moderator advice, so it can be vetted for appropriateness before going up. Hope nobody will regard this as spamming.

I am planning a new site aimed at potential switchers from Windows and MacOS, with emphasis on the practical side of setup and everyday recreational/productivity use. The aim is to present just enough information, with a gentle learning-curve for the nontechnical user, to help people choose from a short list of newbie-friendly distros, and to get them up and running to the point where more in-depth sites can take over. (Off-site links will abound, to point them to these sites as needed.)

My chief motivation is that, looking at a majority of advocacy/introductory sites out there, most can look scary and impenetrable to the average OS refugee. I'm hoping for a type of site that can lure you in, keep you entertained, not bore you with too much Open Source politics, and sneakily educate you while your guard is down.

I have materials available that further outline my plans, and if this post is permitted, I'll post a link so you can download, read, and if you like, suggest refinements.

I still need input from a lot of fields to make this work, of course. People well-experienced (or even just a bit experienced) in things like Linspire, Fedora, Mandriva, SuSE, LinuxFromScratch, Mac OS X, Win/Mac equivalent apps on Linux, I would love to hear from you if you think you could write short and newbie-friendly articles on these and other subjects. You will of course get a byline and link on anything I use!

I won't say any more until I have the board's approval, but I hope I have made clear that I don't wish to bring badness to this board which has helped me many times. Please ask if you have any questions!

Cheers,
Robin
(Havin_it)

PurduePete · 09-21-2005, 01:49 PM

I am currently working for a school system that is test-piloting Linspire for a One-to-One program(for more information on what that is, e-mail me spencerbarnes@voyager.net).

Anywho, I'm fairly well experienced with Linspire and Debian. Of course, I've used Windows most of my life, so I'm also experienced there. I'd like to contribute in any way I can. When I first decided to switch from Windows to Linux, there wasn't anything around like that to help smooth the transition. I ended up doing a lot of Google searches to find out what I needed. I also used Linux.org for most of their How-Tos, and of course LinuxQuestions. So I guess the big question is...what can I do to help?

titanium_geek · 09-21-2005, 09:19 PM

posting a list of wanted articles (such as "so what about office?" etc - short articles) would be helpful.

I think this sort of site is what is needed. I can help with webdesign and coding if needed- also mac stuff.

welcome to LQ!

titanium_geek

hackerarchangel · 09-21-2005, 11:28 PM

Hello. I have had some recent expirience in switching from Windows to Linux. The only easy way to do it is to provide help and to make sure that it is understandable. I have used several different ones, and my favorite is Amigo Linux 2. However, it doesn't work with XP. Also the "creator" had some difficulty in understanding my problems, as I didn't have the information needed on hand. So the users have to have either the knowledge to fix it or the distro has to auto configure and contain a lot of drivers. Just a heads for you guys, I think it's an excellent idea. I wish I had this when I switched...

Charred · 09-22-2005, 12:14 AM

[silliness]WOW! Someone who follows the rules! Oh, frabjious day![/silliness]

Havin_it · 09-25-2005, 06:05 AM

Wow! Thanks all for posting, and big thx to the mod team for letting this go up

I've been in a place without t'interweb for a few days (yes, such places do exist) dealing with some unpleasant business, and this was an excellent surprise to return to.

Now I have URL permissions, here are some URLs:

Code:

http://thejoyoftux.net/workfiles/TheJoyOfTux-layout-draft.pdf
[Sketch of main content areas]

http://thejoyoftux.net/workfiles/TheJoyOfTux-layout-draft.odt
[Same thing, in editable OpenDocument format if anyone wants to annotate, just mail it back to me]

http://thejoyoftux.net/workfiles/penguin.png
[A penguin I did in Freehand.  Not very cuddly but hey, if you're an artist, feel free to jump in..!]

http://thejoyoftux.net/workfiles/aomighty/equivalents.html
[Table of equivalents to favourite Win/Mac apps by Martin Kelly.  Feel free to suggest additions, or try writing a micro-guide to one you know well]

#I'm avoiding live links until I'm ready to get spidered.

The above domain should give a hint what the site is called, so if you dislike punning, leave now!

The layout draft is over a week old now, and I have one or two thoughts about further refinements, which I'll scribble down when time permits. For example, a nice feature might be a short questionnaire about a user's needs from their OS, which could spit out a recommended distro at the end.

To this end, top of my article wishlist is for people to write a short piece (not more than 200 words) 'selling' their favourite distro to the n00b audience, rounded off with a bulleted list of pros and cons. Similar writeups for Linux apps in the equivalents table are also high on the list.

Ideas are coming together, and I'm cock-a-hoop that this community is taking an interest. Articles, ideas, critique, cute penguin artwork etc. please to robin AAAAT thejoyoftux DOOOOO0OT net.

@Charred: big up to the Lewis Carroll refs!

hackerarchangel · 09-25-2005, 03:38 PM

I agree with the short questionare. It will help many users find a possible distro they like.

ubuntu2 · 09-26-2005, 11:54 PM

http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...79#post1871979
http://www.howtoforge.com/

Havin_it · 09-27-2005, 04:00 AM

Thanks for the link ubuntu2! The site looks great - are you involved with it yourself? Do you know its policy on syndicating content? If I find anything there we could use I'll have to find out about that; meantime, I would certainly consider linking to it.

In other news, I've thought of a subject not yet mentioned: hardware. This is such a multi-faceted subject that it's hard to know how to treat it in the same 'superficial' (maybe not the best word lol) manner as the site in general.

I guess what people will want to know first is, "Will this device work out of the box, or take weeks of painstaking research and trial-and-error to make work, or maybe not work at all?" Hmmm. I'll try to devise a framework for this. Any suggestions, please let me know.

hackerarchangel · 09-27-2005, 12:35 PM

Yeah, actually. The hardware issues I faced when starting using variant of Slackware was kind of um, a pain in the butt! If some one besides the creator had a general way of telling me that what I needed was some where else, it would have been a lot easier.

david_ross · 09-27-2005, 12:53 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by Havin_it
I guess what people will want to know first is, "Will this device work out of the box, or take weeks of painstaking research and trial-and-error to make work, or maybe not work at all?" Hmmm. I'll try to devise a framework for this. Any suggestions, please let me know.

The hardware compatability list on LQ should help with that, a link to it may even suffice for you although it will not have "out of the box" information for each distro:
http://www.linuxquestions.org/hcl/

Do you know what licence you are going to make the site available under? If you decide to use the creative commons licence it would make an exchange of information with the LQ wiki:
http://wiki.linuxquestions.org/wiki/

And just one more plug... if you are suggesting that people download the ISOs don't forget about the LQ ISO site:
http://iso.linuxquestions.org/