Any newbie Linux forums 4039

On Sun, 10 Jul 2005 11:37:02 -0400, Phil Coen staggered into the Black Sun and said:

Depends on the gurus themselves. Peter T. Breuer knows a lot of stuff, but he really isn't able to express that stuff in a newbie-oriented way. Alan Connor is just a net.kook, and not as much of a guru as he thinks he is. Michael Heiming seems to be able to get things across well. I try, but I'm not always successful.

Part of it is that 80% of newbie questions have already been asked and answered many times, and a quick visit to quickly. The rest...? I dunno. I personally tend to answer questions that touch on programs or hardware that I've used before, so I skip over questions about GNOME or BazBarf 9100 motherboards or WeirdDistro 9.6-- regardless of whether they're newbie questions or not.

help. There are distro-oriented web forums for at least Fedora, Mandrake, and Gentoo, and many of these have "installation" or "setup" divisions. Finally, if you live near a college or university, or in a town with more than 80,000 people, there's a Linux User Group near you. Google for them and you'll probably find their meeting schedule. Bring your machine to one of their meetings and you'll get some answers and advice. Talking with folks in person is even faster at solving problems than IRC is!

The main problem with learning from other newbies is that you end up with the bland leading the bland, and they all fall into the kitsch. OTOH, the following approach seems to work all right for computers in general, and may work for Life:

0. Try something new. 1. If it failed, remember how it failed, don't do it exactly the same way again. Goto 0. 2. If it worked, remember how it worked. If what you tried illustrates a general concept, remember that concept, apply to other instances of things that worked in the past. 3. Have a {beer,snack,something} for positive reinforcement. Goto 0.

Other posters upthread have talked about ESR's "Smart Questions" page, which you might want to read. Specifics are essential in any tech discussion--questions like "How do I do $THING in FooDistro 4.5?" or "How do I make a FooBar 800 sound card work in BarDistro 5.6?" tend to get answers.

you with understanding basic Unix command-line concepts. Don't neglect the KDE and GNOME help browsers either--the documentation in those things is all in HTML with occasional pictures. The HOWTOs in provide a place to start. HTH,

-- Matt GThere is no Darkness in Eternity-But only Light too dim for us to see Brainbench MVP for Linux Admin mail: TRAP + SPAN don't belong ----------------------------- This space sort of for rent.