Newbie and using Ubuntu

[Richard Schinnell]

I have been reading the lists and it looks to me that 90% of the posters are 
"grep-ds-grok" type people.

I would like to see a list for those of us who know nothing (or very little) 
about Unix and are coming from the windows environment.  Answering someone's 
question with well all you have to do is "sudo ad infinitum and Xf11Ceas" 
type of stuff is going to discourage them from moving forward. I thought 
that all the Linux people wanted to convert the MS Win people over to their 
side.

Talking to newbies in code will not help your case and send many back to 
their familiar windows desktop environment. Telling them to go read a book 
won't help either as I know many people who went to best buy, bought a 
computer and took it home. Hooked it up and within an hour they were on the 
internet. Not safely for sure but they saw action and were teased with the 
possibilities..


There has to be a better way to figure out and recommend solutions to new 
Linux (Ubuntu) users problems.

I have installed Ubuntu on a stand along machine which worked great. No 
problems installing and getting to the graphics desktop.  This is where 
people like me (and many others) belong. Not at the terminal prompt. Which 
can be daunting to non dos or non unix people..

I have problems getting a printer installed on my stand alone Ubuntu 
machine.
I have a windows 2003 network with a few XP workstations and a couple of 
Linksys print servers for a HP LJ 4000 and a HPLJ 3330.
I have shared the printers on a couple of workstations and even did it on 
the server.  I know the ip of the print servers but can not get either to 
print a test page.
Even if someone told me that I needed to download a file and do something 
with it. I probably could not do it outside of the graphic environment.

There has to be a better way than some smart SSA telling me that I am a 
dummy for not knowing what cupsys does..

I have even gotten Ubuntu to work in a Virtual PC session on a Laptop 
running Windows XP.  I can do most everything except print and hear sound.

I Installed DOS 6.2 and Windows 3.11wg and can print to the printers and get 
on the internet with Netscape 2.0 and Eudora 1.4.  that was easy. I 
installed W98se,W2k And Windows server 2003 without problems.  All print to 
the Linksys print servers via the standard tcp-ip ports.

Maybe Linux and the graphics interface still has a way to go to be able to 
bring  the unwashed and unworthy into the Linux fold.

Rich

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