"Linux is just Red Hat"

[Ari Torhamo]

....
>  Think of them as understudies -- teach them how to find the
> > answers on their own, then step out of the way and let them proceed at
> > their own pace on their own path.
> 
> Or make it such that they don't have to find the answers at all
> because the questions just don't come up... now _THAT_ is a challenge
> worthy of society's efforts.
....
....
....
> How about never having to RTFM. At most, RTFS should suffice to do 90%
> of tasks and 99% of everyday tasks (since 1984 I've never RTFM! (I
> started life as a Mac user)... at most I'll RTF manpage, wiki or HOWTO
> nowadays (and, for people who haven't been around computers as long as
> I, the latter three options ought not appear).
> 
> Eric.
> 

I'm so glad to read your words Eric. 

In the future large majority of Ubuntu users will be people who are not
having their operating system as a hobby. They are not spending hundreds
of hours learning their system just to be able to fix possible problems
they might encounter some time in the future. 

Perhaps some people on this list have forgotten how much time they
themselves have spent to aquire the computer skills they have. Hundreds
of hours? Thousands of hours? Why would it take any less for these
newcomers to aquire such skills. And generally they don't want to spent
endless hours just to learn Linux internals - not because they are lazy,
ignorant or stupid, but because they have other things to do. 

There shouldn't be need for these new Linux users to learn much more of
their operating system than just how to start it and how to shut it
down. It's one of the great things in Linux that those people - and they
are more than a few - who want to learn more, to dig deeper, are allowed
to do so. But why not to make it easy for the rest of us who just want
to get things done with their computer and then concentrate to other
good things that fill their days.

In the future most new Ubuntu users propably aren't going to spend one
tenth of the time I have spent to learn how to install, tweak and
administer Linux and Ubuntu, but still I don't even understand the
instructions in the Ubuntu wiki page how to install Java to my
system :-/ 

I hope I'm not sounding too negative here. I'm confident that Ubuntu is
heading to right direction and skilled people here on this list are in
their part helping it to happen - and that's great!

Regards

Ari (Vince would know something funny to put here :-)