Hello all. I'm a Windows user looking to get away from it before the support for Windows 2000 ends. I call myself advanced, i do advanced things with my computers and i cared for a Windows workgroup at university. For over 2 years now i tried to use Linux more but the switch proved particularly hard for me. I know how to do things in Windows, and things work for me there, and naturally i run against walls when trying to do the same in Linux. For example, i recently set up a laptop for my mother who is a computer noob, with Mandriva. It suddenly started to become unstable and had many file system errors. I spend several hours looking for a software cause of the instabilities until i realized that it was a hardware defect. My mum will do just fine with Mandriva, she's a beginner anyway.
I've tried several distros already, plain Debian, Ubuntu, Kanotix, Suse, Fedora, Mandriva (which is going a really good way towards user friendlyness). At the moment I'm setting up 64Studio which i will likely keep for my music production.
What i'm looking for is the computer that just anyone can use as a handy tool to juggle with. An interface that talks and understands human language (not acoustically!) instead of it requiring the human to learn computer language. UIs have to guide the user to what she wants to do and to what the software is capable of doing. Away with the command line, away with those acronyms. I'm looking for the computer where the user doesn't have to care how things work because they just work as expected. USB storage media for example, when i stick them in they have to be auto-mounted. It's been a standard for almost a decade and only now this starts to get through to most of the linux distros. Or CD drives - when i press the button then i want it to eject, why should i want to unmount it .
Well, i think we're getting there. Don't get me wrong, i like to still have 'full advanced control' if i wanted to. There's just better things to do in life than finding out how to talk to machines .

So i hope i can ask some more or less dumb questions here and save myself from wasting time and from the frustration

Hullo, and welcome to LQ!

I actually find Linux much better at what you are talking about, by and large. Most applications with config files are dead easy to tweak, and most config files I have tweaked are very well commented. It just needs some command line work to be easy- rather than all gui, all the time .
I really don't see, any more, what the problem is with command line editing- it's not hard, it's *way* faster than any gui interface, it's not complicated.
Note that I'm *not* a computer guy- I'm a computer user- but typing a couple of words in a console window is so much easier than click this, click that, drill down in the menu, click that, then actually type in what you want to do.

I also don't have a problem with the command line, nor with config files if they are accessible and well commented, i just wish that people didn't have to learn some cryptic computer language. OK you learned the computer language. Now imagine that instead the computer had learned your language and just did anything you asked it to do in a normal sentence you type in at the command line - would you have bothered to look up the acronymic commands instead? I guess you're quite young, so imagine you were older and touched a computer for the first time. I found out that my mum needs a whole new way of thinking. She keeps telling me she feels dumb because she "forgot where she must klick next". I will have to teach her about some of the inner workings of the PC so that she is even able to look and see that there are numerous possibilities offered and that she must know what the machine will do when she clicks. But what we want is really the other way around - we want the computer to know/do what my mum wants to do when she clicks.

Most tasks we do on a computer are actually very simple. "Move the photos of my last mountain walk from the camera to the place on the PC where all the other mountain photos are stored." Doing this on the command line, you have to remember all those things, where the cam is mounted (or have to find out if you know how or if you don't, find out how to find out first), where the destination folder is, what the acronym for moving files is, including selecting files per date, all this is very abstract and you have to picture it in your head - HELL!

Then you take a graphic file manager and - MHHHHHHH - suddenly you have not only the graphic picture of the whole situation shown on the screen (because the PC 'knows' it and can guide you), you also have a grabbing and moving tool in your hand to do the job in an intuitive way.

Alternatively, and that's my star-trek-esque vision, there could just be more 'awareness' within the machine, so that it 'knows' what you are talking about when you type in "Move the photos of my last mountain walk from the camera to the place on the PC where all the other mountain photos are stored. And yeah, of course, rotate those that are supposed to stand upright, will you!" Remember, this is a really simple job. Would be awesome to just tell the machine you want it to do this and that.

There is plenty of computing time to do so whereas humans time is too valuable to be wasted only for adapting the human to a machine (did i say, enslave?). It has to be the other way around - the machine has to adapt to the human. The machine is the tool, after all.

- end of monologue - I think this is not the right forum to talk so much philosophy


ps. Something funny on the way. I was curious and fired the spell checker on this posting. It is so smart to suggest i change the word 'acronymic' (which might well not exist in this way but what gives, it fits perfectly, imo) to 'agronomic'.

Interesting read.. Some interesting points..

'Agronomic' - pn. "To have little difficulty angrily beating the crap out of someone efficiently and cost-effectively."

e.g: "Chicago Mobsters are very agronomic."

LOL, ok I made that up too.. But look HERE for the rest of the weirdness..

You sound like a typical Windows "power user" who will have a helluva time adapting to Linux, and will probably give up soon.

Wow. Positive attitude, please. Actually, he sounds a lot like me when I was trying to break into Linux. I think I had much more DOS/Windows admin experience under my belt, but the Linux learning curve was still steep. Here I am 2 years later, still learning Linux, and enjoying every bit of it.

Schneckl,
One of the very first things you need to do is breath. Realize that you will be stepping into a new realm. You can't think Linux is like Windows. Sure, there are some visual similarities, but that's about the end. Linux works in ways much different than Windows.

Next, Linux does come with GUIs like Gnome (my favorite) and KDE. KDE feels much more like Windows than Gnome. Both provide many of the tools you want.

Anyway, good luck in your venture, and welcome to LQ!

Hmmm....like most generalities, this is probably disproveable.

I was a Windows "power user in training" until I saw the "Linux Light". But before Windows, I had dabblings in Fortran, Unix, VMS, Apple-II, and I did some C programming on the early Macs. None of that dabbling resulted in any noteworthy achievements, but I was at least smart enough to know that "Windows PC" and "Computer" are not synonyms, and I knew that computers can be controlled without a GUI.

If you have a general knowledge of computers, you will recognize that Linux is not a new thing. It is more like back to basics--built on a foundation that long predates Windows--or even Microsoft.

To be sure, there are people running around who have never used anything but Windows, and regard anything else as threatening**. These people are salvageable--albeit with a bit more effort....

**Particularly true in some IT departments--people can see their jobs at stake.

I'm 60 years old and if I can catch on to Linux in less than a year to the point that I can and do help other people setup and learn Linux than anyone even you whipper snappers should have no problem. I've used about everything from Dos 5 and a=most of the windows programs before I switched to Linux and I won't go back.

rickh makes a good point. Unfortunately, a lot of people do give up. Linux is Not perfect and it does have its warts. Hopefully, you will use his comment as motivation.

I used to be the biggest Microsoft poweruser you'd ever know, and when I switched to Linux (in 2002) the people I know said, "Yeah, this will last a couple months". I haven't had any MS system installed on my computer since 2003.

Bragging rights, yes, but of course I've had my share of headaches with Linux too.

The main reason I keep Linux is because I believe in software freedom.

you know, technically i think your supposed to do that EVEN in windows. if you have a flash drive plugged in,
look in your taskbar, you should see an icon named "Safely remove hardware" or something like that. its kinda
like unmounting so thats not a linux only thing...

Not to sound condescending but you sound like many of my friends that talk me into wiping out their windows
to stick ubuntu or fedora on it simply because they just don't want to use windows anymore. but they don't really
care to find out how to do stuff and they want it to "just work" as, from what i gather, are your expectations as
well.

Unless your doing some serious configuration or other big system changes, the "friendlier" distros like ubuntu and
mandriva dont really require you learn obscure and atypical acronyms and commands, though most of it i think is
rather intuitive. there are a myriad of configuration tools and other graphical interfaces, far more than ms
offers.
and ms does?

I keep linux because i have an insatiable urge to tinker. and if you fiddle with ms too much it breaks, and there is little you can do other than reprogram when you break some stuff in ms. ive screwed this slack install up pretty bad in the past messing with stuff i shouldn't have(personalized udev was probably the worst) and ive always been able to bring it back.

if your willing to _try_ and learn then you will be glad you did. Im sure you didnt learn to "do advanced things" in ms overnight either...

Linux is free,just free.You get it with a very low price,and you get a lot of good software which produce by those of the smartest men in the world at the same time!So there must be something that you have to pay!I think,the cost you have to pay is you have to get used of the way that the free-software-writers (or directly speaking :hackers) think through.
Just think what cost that you have to pay when you use MS-software?
Money! hahahaha! You have to pay a lot of money to buy windows and other application software.You have to use expensive hardware too,so that your system can run normally.
Ok,suppose you're reach,but you also have to suffer from the virus and attacks...
Every one have his/her own situation,and he/she will make a choice in terms of it.If you have decided,just enjoy it!^_^

The other day I was trying to configure a networked laser printer on an XP computer. The dialog to select the printer doesn't allow simply entering the IP address, and the printer wasn't showing up in the network, even though I could ping it and access it's web interface. Making things really easy can ironically make thing impossible when everything isn't right. Previously the wireless network setup wizard would tell you to insert a floppy to save the configuration. My laptop didn't have a floppy.

I'd much rather edit a text configuration file than use regedit. Plus most Linux distro's have GUI configuration setup programs, so you may not need to edit a configuration file, but it is nice to be able to if you need to fine tune something.

Take a look at a part of the /etc/sudoers file:
The configuration file explains itself. You probably only need to uncomment a couple lines and you are done.

Lastly,
Good Luck with your Linux adventures!