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I think said newbies must have a guru they can rely on. If you have a guru, it's best to start with the same distribution your guru's using, even if that's Slackware, which is the hardest distro to learn. It makes things easier for the guru, and what the guru understands well, they will be able to teach well.
I just don't want anybody rushing out and trying some uber-hard-to-learn Linux distro and turning their back on the OS forever.
And honestly, if you have a sincere desire to learn Linux well, you're not really a newbie. But it's got to be a sincere desire, not just curiosity that evaporates once you find yout that there's hard work to be done in the learning.
I think, if I could get it installed (It doesn't like installing on a HD that's on an ATA card :(), Gentoo would be for me, to be fair. But I also think that Gentoo, from the get-go, is the second-hardest distro after Slackware. And I only say second-hardest because it gets easy once the setup's done--it is a true nightmare to install, and I don't even think it's within the ability of non-technical users.
Yes, the installation instructions are complete. Yes, they're easy to understand--for you. Remember that non-technical users can't read that kind of thing. Even if it is pretty simple...Well, I think that Jesse Liberty's C++ book was pretty simple, but show it to a non-programmer and they just say "What?"
Non-technical users tend to have a psychological block where they think that anything IT is hard, no matter how simple it is, and when you spell it out for them, they still think that there's something missing, that they can't possibly get it, because it was too easy.
The same goes for technical users, to some extent :p. I spent weeks and weeks studying DFS because I thought it was bloody difficult, before I realized that I couldn't learn anymore because there was nothing more to learn. I'd already absorbed all the info the books had on DFS, and I understand DFS well enough to easily answer certification-level DFS questions.
That kind of thing is worse with non-technical users, though. If you think you can't understand something, it's a self-fulfilling prophecy.
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I guess I have to admit that I have no concept of how easy things are for the average user. Blah.
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Neither do I, really, but I have dealt with the frustration of trying to explain things to non-technical users ><
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Actually now that I think about it werts more of a zealot ie: a rabid fan that endorses linux at every cost, I'll learn visual c++, thanx Bleys.;)
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Linux is that good--if you're ready for it.
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Yosh:Hey wert' why is linux the best?
Wert:Coz' its freeeeeeeee.
There you have it.:p
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It's good because it's free as in speech, not because it's free as in beer, to quote a common Linux saying. It's good because I can do whatever I want with it. I downloaded a program yesterday and it didn't work. So I fixed it, and now it works. If this was Windows I'd be screwed. Someone sat down one day and said "Hey, maybe I should group up all this source code in a nice to use way" and the result was Redhat. Someone else said "I bet I could make something better than other stuff out there" and the result was Gentoo. That's why Linux is good. With Windows you use what MS tells you to use, or you use nothing at all. Sucks. Linux is mostly the result of code written by people who just love to code, and it shows. I've paid money for Linux in the past even though I can get it for free, and I'll pay money for it in the future too, because it's that good.
