Date: Mon, 30 Oct 2000 10:31:26 -0800 From: David Johnson <djohnson@acuson.com> To: freebsd-newbies@freebsd.org Subject: Newbie packages Message-ID: <39FDBE7E.5310B2B9@acuson.com>
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I've been thinking of ways to help out newbies that don't involve publishing savvy, programming expertise or marketing skills. Helping out with the documentation is always a good one. But I'm thinking of one particular "hole" in the documentation... What about a list of appropriate and/or recommended packages to install for newbies? Many Linux distributions have recommended packages for beginners, which are selected by default. Instead of making the brand new user select from two dozen text editors, one is selected by default. With consumer-oriented operating systems (windows/mac), the packages are chosen for you far in advance. But in FreeBSD you have thousands of unfamilar (to the newbie) packages to look over and choose from. All this choice can be confusing at the novice level. So I'm thinking of creating a short article (unofficial) that lists one or two recommended packages in a variety of categories. I would like to see a short descriptive paragraph, probably taken from the ports, and a couple of comments from users. So I'm soliciting comments on this idea as a whole, and also your comments on packages that you have found to be useful for newbies. The packages I am looking for don't have to be the most powerful, but they should be appropriate for novices. Categories, off the top of my head: text editor, word processor, spreadsheet, window manager, desktop, browser, mailer, image processing, image viewing. I also want a list of packages that are difficult for the novice, but still essential to learn (like vi), and a list of any "required" packages that aren't installed by default. Thanks, David To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-newbies" in the body of the message
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