Date: Sun, 13 May 2001 12:26:23 +0200 From: Rahul Siddharthan <rsidd@physics.iisc.ernet.in> To: Kathy Quinlan <katinka@magestower.com> Cc: Sue Blake <sue@welearn.com.au>, N6REJ <n6rej@tcsn.net>, freebsd-newbies@FreeBSD.ORG, freebsd-advocacy@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: I'm leaving Message-ID: <20010513122623.I97034@lpt.ens.fr> In-Reply-To: <00f401c0db7e$ff3ca2a0$fe00a8c0@kat.lan>; from katinka@magestower.com on Sun, May 13, 2001 at 03:33:24PM %2B0800 References: <002b01c0db54$e0febaa0$5599ca3f@disappointment> <20010513171444.E26123@welearn.com.au> <00f401c0db7e$ff3ca2a0$fe00a8c0@kat.lan>
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> I have only received 2 posts from troy, 6 and 8th of may, no others, not > even the I am leaving one, and I am on both Questions and newbies, > > I am just wondering how many others did not receive them, if I don't get > them I can not reply <G> It seems he sent the original mail only to -advocacy. I don't know what questions he asked, but it seems to me that using FreeBSD requires a certain mindset. It is an extremely organised and methodical system, and if you ask well posed questions, you always get answers. Often you can find the answers in the docs if you know where to look. But I find that most people (even intelligent, computer-literate people) get intimidated by it, even though it works well and the ports system etc are appealing. These people have problems with the chaotic nature of linux distributions: but for some reason they find it too difficult to adjust to the FreeBSD mindset, even when it's demonstrated to them that you can easily do with FreeBSD just about anything you can do with Linux. Would it be a good idea to have a "default GUI install" as one of the install options, which sets up either KDE or GNOME, and a web browser, and desktop icons for the HTML-ised version of the FreeBSD handbook? Then when the user logs in and wants to learn more about the system, there's no need to poke around in /usr/share/doc (many people don't seem to realise it exists, until it's pointed out to them): they can just click and read. Some sort of tweak could be made to the KDE/GNOME help browsers to include the basic FreeBSD stuff there too. I really don't think it's so difficult to use FreeBSD if you read the docs, but many people don't realise just how good the docs are... Just a thought. -Rahul To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-newbies" in the body of the message
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