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Re: A new user to GNU/Linux WAS: Re: [Fsuk-manchester] the non-free neig


From: John Southern
Subject: Re: A new user to GNU/Linux WAS: Re: [Fsuk-manchester] the non-free neighbour asking for help dilemma
Date: Tue, 13 May 2008 20:24:39 +0100
User-agent: KMail/1.9.6

Hi Tim,

Wow! And I thought I helped my brother a lot. Then again he does owe me beer.

> 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

Fully agree. You did the right thing.

> 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/

I live this daily.

> 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:

So that is a win.

> 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.

K9copy is the DVD equivalent to K3B

> <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.

Not come across IcedTea Java.

> 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...

Thank you.

In the meantime I am fighting with gNewSense. It has now been five days and I 
am struggling. I had planned to only use it for a week and then see whether I 
could live with it on a permanent basis. The rate I am going I will have to 
give it a little longer as it is causing such difficulties that I find myself 
daydreaming about sending the whole of FSF hate mail, putting a Gnu on a 
barbecue and never saying a bad word about not getting source code again.
I will solider on in the hope of divine inspiration will strike me and I will 
see sense.

John







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