Lars Wirzenius wondered how usable Debian with GNOME is for the uninitiated, or more specifically, for someone who has been using Windows for a number of years, and switches to Debian. The experiment will continue for a couple of months. The first use went pretty well, with only a couple of real problems which he outlined.
Debian for the Uninitiated
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Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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Lars Wirzenius is a friend of Linus from college, they were the Swedish speaking (I think it was Swedish) Fin’s at their University in Helsinki.
The article will be much more interesting later on. The first session is always “oh no, why is this all different?” It’s in the later sessions where you say things like “oh I see why this is different, I like it this way” and “this really shouldn’t be this way.”
>The article will be much more interesting later on.
Hope so, although I’m afraid she might not be able to appreciate the power of the shell after such a short period (took me about a year to find it really useful).
On the surface Windows and Linux are pretty much the same.
She will notice the difference if she goes back to Windows and her computer gets pwned
Yea, I had to get a job administering systems which had no X11 to begin to truly appreciate the shell. It wasn’t like I’d never used it, but I was terrible with Vim and couldn’t even figure out how to exit emacs, much less write strings of commands with several pipes.
I did immediately notice the configurability difference. Little things, like 3 ways to maximize a window, middle click paste, the ability to theme virtually anything, change colors (for KDE), etc. The first thing I noticed, actually, back in the ol’ RH8.0 days when I started was “there are two desktop environments.” Of course, there are more, but Gnome and KDE were installed.
I know some people say “confusion, what do I do?” But I said “oh neat, I want to try them both! Are there anymore?” I guess that sort of things depends on how much you enjoy using your PC as a tool/toy and how much you just use it cause you have to.
Not too bad, provided that you read apt-howto, you learn about debconf, optionally the Debian way to install Nvidia (with module-assistant, pretty easy)…
Edited 2006-08-09 16:25
I’ve never noticed that I don’t torrent outward. Ah well.
Bloody leecher:-)
1) Networking: Using Kanotix, I set up defaults for the types of connections needed, and activate them with scripts linked to desktop icons. There is also the Kanotix network configuration script. This is called, “using Debian with a bit of help.”
2) Bittorrent: You know, I keep coming back to Bittorrent-gui. It works well, and negotiates firewalls well.
3) OpenOffice: Eventually she will learn that you can open any OpenOffice file type from any aspect of the program.
4) Totem: Of all the Gnome apps, Totem is my favorite. I tend to use Kaffeine, because I use KDE more than Gnome.
5) Firefox: I strongly recommend NOT using Debian’s version of Firefox, or if you do, that you use the one in Sid. The reason? Security issues. You get your updates sooner if you go through Mozilla, rather than Debian, and here time is important. Sid will get updates faster than Etch, and if a build is broken, Sid will get the fix faster.
I haven’t seen the resizing bugs your user encountered, either. Also, it’s easy to force Firefox to start maximized (at least, it’s easy in KDE). Further, you can play with Firefox’s DPI and font settings to get text size to behave itself.
6) Start-up Errors: Your user reported an unconfigured ACPI, based on a start-up error. That’s precisely why I like seeing all that text scrolling by.
All in all, I commend your user. She seems resourceful, and able to adapt well to the new system.
Ktorrent is great and I wish they would have a kaffeine Extension for Firefox instead of MediaPlayerConnectivity; which only starts it up Blah.