Kubuntu is not for beginners?

[Valorie Zimmerman]

I know this is rather old, but I missed it when it was fresh. Replies
inline below.

On Wed, Jul 17, 2013 at 9:26 PM, Scott Kitterman <ubuntu at kitterman.com> wrote:
> On Wednesday, July 17, 2013 07:48:48 PM Steve Riley wrote:
>> On 2013-07-17 22:38:50 Scott Kitterman <ubuntu at kitterman.com> wrote:
>> > On Wednesday, July 17, 2013 06:44:23 PM Steve Riley wrote:
>> > > On 2013-07-17 20:38:33 Clay Weber <clay at claydoh.com> wrote:
>> > > > On Thursday, July 18, 2013 02:22:33 AM Volkan Gezer wrote:
>> > > > > Do you know what the reason of not being in Beginner category for
>> > > > > Kubuntu
>> > > > > is?
>> > > >
>> > > > Are we *supposed* to be a beginner distro?
>> > >
>> > > I hope not. The world has enough "beginner" distros. Face it: Linux in
>> > > general will not appear to the typical beginner audience, frequently
>> > > characterized as one's grandmother or elderly parent. Many of us want a
>> > > reasonably advanced and sophisticated distro that we can bend to our
>> > > will
>> > > without having to completely to Arch or Gentoo. Kubuntu fills this role
>> > > nicely, IMHO.
>> >
>> > I'm really not sure what this entire discussion is about.  We want Kubuntu
>> > to be as widely useful as we can manage and that means making it easy for
>> > people that are new.  "For beginners" is mostly, IMO, about default
>> > install.  Non- beginners are quite capable of installing other stuff they
>> > want.  That's where the breadth of the Debian archive that is 75% sync'ed
>> > into Ubuntu unmodified really pays off.
>> >
>> > Yes, let's make it easy for people that want easy, but that doesn't mean
>> > other interests are precluded.  We aren't going to remove options or dumb
>> > things down, but you don't have to do that to make it easy.
>>
>> Probably this part:
>> > remove options or dumb things down
>>
>> is often associated with making this easier for newbies. The industry has
>> seen a lot of this lately, and I'm not convinced that it actually succeeds
>> at the goal of drawing in large numbers of new users.
>>
>> I wasn't implying that Kubuntu should abandon whole classes of users.
>> Looking back, it's easy to read that into what I wrote.
>
> So let's say we make Kubuntu easy for beginners (as a goal).  We don't do that
> by dumbing it down.
>
> Scott K

I think we make Kubuntu "beginner friendly" by providing clear choices
during installation and early use. In other words, all menus should be
double-checked for clear wording and good organization, all
documentation should be easy to find, and again, clearly written and
well-organized.

In my opinion, the default install is super-easy. Where we fall down a
bit is when people have to make choices during installation which are
NOT always clear. Aaron and I are working on a set of install images
with text to explain all the choices. I know that not everyone who
needs this information will find it, but right now, there is nothing
suitable *anywhere.*

We all should let friends and relatives do installs while watching,
and ask them to do various tasks while just watching. We would learn a
great deal about how to make things more clear and understandable. The
people who attended the Usability workshop in Bilbao all learned a LOT
about their applications.

I hope we never dumb anything down, because I want to use Kubuntu forever. :-)

Valorie
-- 
http://about.me/valoriez