A new user to GNU/Linux WAS: Re: [Fsuk-manchester] the non-free neighbour asking for help dilemma

[Tim Dobson]

John Southern wrote:
> Would it be possible to get your brother to install gNewSense while you are 
> present to help if needed and tell us (at least me because I am interested in 
> knowing) what bits he fines easy, hard, simple, and impossible.
>
> If he then installs Windows at a later date, could he also do the same?

hi John,

Unfortunately, getting my brother on the road to freedom, I believe, is 
more important than using him as a guinea pig to gauge people's 
responses to things, however I can give some insight into my brothers 
progress

------------

Initially, I think my brother aim was simply to resize a few partitions 
and reinstall Windows XP, however I think it probably went something 
like this for him: http://xkcd.com/349/

Once he had managed to get his windows xp installation disk, and had 
installed XP, his network card refused to work, under XP.
I was called in to fix it and after a long while troubleshooting, it was 
clear to me that the card looked dead.

Both gNewSense & Ubuntu live CDs decided they didn't want to work with 
it, and troubleshooting it for ages on the Windows side - (the LAST 
thing I want, is him messing with the router when they work fine!) I 
came to the conclusion, possibly a bit hastily that it was dead. However 
I noticed that there was another network card, which my brother claimed 
not to know about, and a bit of digging, pulling up flaps of metal, 
revealed the onboard ethernet, with worked instantly with no issues.

For the record, I didn't tell him that I had switched which ethernet 
card he was using.

After I had his computer online, I booted up Windows, opened 
getgnulinux.org and ubuntu.com in IE and wrote a note in notepad, 
briefly, explaining what the benefits of switching over would be, ending 
by saying it would be easier for me to support him if he was on GNU/Linux.

This morning, he started asking me questions about GNU/Linux:

Why were there so many flavours?
What made Ubuntu more user friendly than the others?
Ajehals recommended Debian, why will I be happier on Ubuntu.
Why doesn't everyone work on one flavour?

"It's badly marketed" - Free Software == Freedom & loads of 
distributions is bad for marketing

I explained the answers to these questions and the statement.

I then briefly demonstrated how installing software is different 
(package manager) though I don't expect he will remember or totally 
understand this yet.

We then went through the list of software he needed to run:

Command and Conqueror apparently has a Gold rating in Wine so that 
looked fine.
SimCity 4, also seemed to have been proven to work with WINE well.
In terms of Webrowser, Firefox is probably what he'll use, though I 
suggested he might find Epiphany more like IE 7 (I find it is).
Apparently he doesn't use MSN Messenger much, but aMSN does all that 
quite like "Windows Live Messenger".
He made it quite clear that Multimedia was important to him.
Amarok, in my opinion, is the best music player going, and migrating 
from WMP, he is not going to find any of them particularly fun.
In terms of video, I figured VLC + a video palyer with a xine backend + 
loads and loads of codecs (patent infringing and non-free ones) he would 
be as happy as I could make him.
He also made it clear he wanted to be able to rip DVDs which I knew 
there was some software for (I think I chose Thoggen), and to be able to 
burn DVDs(video&data)/CDs etc. K3B was my first choice here as his 
complaint about Brasseo (or what ever the gnome cd burning thing) which 
he had tested and USED on a gNewSense LiveCD was that it was too simple 
and did not even say the file sizes of files he had added to a project.
For torrents, ktorrent, would adequately replace utorrent in terms of 
features, interface and footprint.
I was told that Officey things weren't used very much, but OO.o would do 
if needed.

<teflon suit>
I decided to install several non-free things:
Sun Java, Adobe Flash, the ATI graphics card driver some non-free codecs.
I know this is a potentially controversial move.
My reasons for installing these things was to make sure he couldn't tell 
me that stuff didn't *work*.

Icedtea Java works for pretty much everything I use except the facebook 
photos uploader. I know my brother uses facebook, so that is out.

Gnash, works on some things, though I enable flashbock because generally 
I prefer life without flash altogether. Youtube etc. and possibly 
iplayer are going to places where I would get complaints about not 
having that installed.

Though possibly superfluous, the ATI graphics card driver, should make 
games much more accessible.

While I realise there are ethical problems with me doing this, and they 
do bother me, I feel it is important to make sure my brother gets firmly 
using GNU/Linux. After about two months, if things are going well, I 
will start to chat about Freedom. However, as Stuart Langbridge 
mentioned; it's important not to bollock the user.

I know there will be strong opinions here, but let's keep it measured 
and friendly.
</teflon suit>

I intend to show him some native GNU/Linux games at some point, though 
he prefers the strategy games, which are outnumbered by the FPS - 
there's Lincity and the Civilisation 1|2 clone - but not really and 
others I don't think.

I have now installed Ubuntu Hardy with KDE, and all said software. 
Because I used a ubuntu cd to install it there are allso all the 
gnome-desktop problems lying around which I may clear up some of at some 
point.

It is now a matter of waiting until I get the first "how do I do this?", 
which, despite me recommending ubuntuguide.org, i suspect is not far away.

One thing I have learnt from this incident is how different other 
people's computer usage is to mine - mail client, calender, last.fm 
client, text editor, are things which are more or less irrelevant to my 
brother.

I'll keep you updated...

Tim



--
www.tdobson.net
----
If each of us have one object, and we exchange them, then each of us
still has one object.
If each of us have one idea, and we exchange them, then each of us now
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