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Classic Linux advice...
You've made the classic mistake that all well meaning techies make and which is what actually turns off many of us linux newbies faster than an unfamiliar OS - you've told us what we should do but not how to do it... for example, how do I not log in as root? sorry, NOT LOG-IN AS ROOT? 
You've forgotten that what is easy and second nature to you guys is just plain obtuse to anyone coming to the OS from fresh... and the cryptic, supposed 'help' forums and docs that can be found on the net don't help either... no wonder people turn back to the more familiar Windows.
I know how to set-up different user accounts, with different administrative privileges on a Windows box but I have no idea where to begin with my brand new Ubuntu installation. Examples please!
It took me days to work out how to mount a network drive, just because all the advice I could find presupposed a sysadmin background. Then I had problems with illegal unicode characters in file names... I thought there's got to be a simple find or list command that I can run from the Terminal (no, I'm not scared of the command line!) but here's the advice I got back (having made it very plain that I was a total newbie): "I haven't tried doing it, but I suspect you could use "find" to list all filenames one by one, then feed each name in turn to "iconv". inconv knows about UTF-8, so if you tell it to convert UTF-8 to something else (say UTF-32) and it gives an error, then you know it's bad."
err.. what? where do I begin?... I'm up for persevering but please pitch your help and advice in a way that makes sense to your audience. that's the only way to encourage us to make the move over. (Unless you're all just using the cryptic jargon as a badge of office that's designed to keep the plebs at bay from your favourite playground?)
You've forgotten that what is easy and second nature to you guys is just plain obtuse to anyone coming to the OS from fresh... and the cryptic, supposed 'help' forums and docs that can be found on the net don't help either... no wonder people turn back to the more familiar Windows.I know how to set-up different user accounts, with different administrative privileges on a Windows box but I have no idea where to begin with my brand new Ubuntu installation. Examples please!
It took me days to work out how to mount a network drive, just because all the advice I could find presupposed a sysadmin background. Then I had problems with illegal unicode characters in file names... I thought there's got to be a simple find or list command that I can run from the Terminal (no, I'm not scared of the command line!) but here's the advice I got back (having made it very plain that I was a total newbie): "I haven't tried doing it, but I suspect you could use "find" to list all filenames one by one, then feed each name in turn to "iconv". inconv knows about UTF-8, so if you tell it to convert UTF-8 to something else (say UTF-32) and it gives an error, then you know it's bad."
err.. what? where do I begin?... I'm up for persevering but please pitch your help and advice in a way that makes sense to your audience. that's the only way to encourage us to make the move over. (Unless you're all just using the cryptic jargon as a badge of office that's designed to keep the plebs at bay from your favourite playground?)
Posted by jerome@...
12th May 2010
