[wplug] beginner tutorial

[J Aaron Farr]

--- James O'Kane <jo2y at midnightlinux.com> wrote:
> We missed having a tutorial last month because I ran out of time to 
> prepare. The next tutorial is scheduled for a month from Saturday and I'd 
> like some brainstorm ideas for things I should include in a tutorial aimed 
> at people using linux for the first time. They can be userlevel or 
> rootlevel things. Try thinking back to your first year of using linux and 
> email me something that you wish someone would have told you on your first 
> day.
> 
> -james
> 

I recently set up a linux box for my family.  My younger sister fell in love
with Tuxracer and Xbill, so she was always in Linux.  My father wanted to get
back into computers and catch up on technology.

I ended up writing a very long email that went over some of the basics for
linux: things like commonly used command line programs (ls, cp, cd), the ideas
of file permissions, what a home directory is, why you have to "mount" CDs and
floppies and how to do so, and a quick overview of the file structure.  This
last thing, the file structure, is probably what I wished to understand better
the most when I first started.  "What is the /usr and /etc directory?"  "Where
should I install new software?"  Things like this confused me for a while when
I first started with Unix/Linux.  There is a logic behind the Unix file
structure, a very good logic, but that logic isn't always apparent without
someone explaining it to you.

Also things like 'man' pages and 'info' pages, ways users can explore and find
more info (like the Linux Documentation project or Sourceforge or Freshmeat
...), these are all things a new user should know about.

In general, when approaching new linux users, I try to think about what type of
common daily activities one does on a computer (thing s you don't even think
about anymore like copying a file) and how these activities are different in
linux.

There was a slashdot post by a new user recently that I thought was
interesting.  Check out:
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=35367&threshold=0&commentsort=0&tid=110&mode=thread&cid=3821651

Just some thoughts...
jaaron

PS- If we have a tutorial like this, we may also want to prepare some "live"
CDs of linux (like demo linux, there are some others), that way some new users
could attend and try out linux on their computer without having to install.

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