Newbie and using Ubuntu

[Jim Cheetham]

On Oct 3, 2004, at 12:39 PM, Richard Schinnell wrote:
> 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.

Ubuntu is trying to become a useable system for everyone, however it is 
only just starting, and not everything is possible at the beginning!

On the other hand, I agree with your desire to see as much answered 
with GUI options as possible - the command-line will always be 
necessary for unusual situations and in-depth error logging, but not 
everyone needs to get into that to fix "normal" problems.

Perhaps people answering queries could try to work within the GUI 
framework by default, instead of always diving to the command line? Or 
at least to explain *why* the command-line needs to be used in this 
example?

>  I thought that all the Linux people wanted to convert the MS Win 
> people over to their side.

No, that's a common misconception. *Some* people talk as if their only 
goal was to "increase choice" by eradicating Microsoft. And I'm sure 
some of them will be promoting Ubuntu :-) I would rather "increase 
choice" by seeing all operating/application systems able to share data 
cleanly, and then compete for existance on user-friendliness (more 
accurately, user-appropriateness).

> 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.
>
I've recently run into problems with a dedicated print server. In the 
GUI, when setting up the queue, you were (hopefully) offered the choice 
of a few different print protocols - LPD is a tempting one, but I've 
found that LaserJet is sometimes better. At some stage, we'll have to 
ask ... have you tried "all possible combinations"?

-jim