I've been following this with some concern, since the discussion has not been cooperative on the whole. A pity, since Colin has been asking a number of good questions very relevant to someone who is used to working with Windows and seems to be finding the path to Linux daunting and confusing.

I can sympathise with the latter. When I came to Linux, back in 1992, I already had good (though basic) Unix experience, and I knew that Unix on the same hardware made DOS (in those days) look like a badly programmed pocket calculator in comparison. In short, it was clear that Unix was an operating system with which you could easily get stunning performance out of your hardware. Windows, later, put a clumsy GUI o top of DOS and only made a bad situation worse (while managing to conceal under the GUI).

But Linux, in those days, was a close clone of bare-bones Unix. No GUI, for instance -- X windows only came in later. So it was not too daunting to get to grips with the system. However, once X windows came in and became generally adopted, complexity and confusion came with it. Not that there was anything particularly confused about how it was put together -- rather, the mere interface itself was so complicated in its internals that users who wanted to stay in control as they had been before faced a serious task of learning a large number of new and complicated things.

The coming of "desktops" such as KDE and Gnome on top of X windows put even more layers of complexity on the fundamental and lucid simplicity of Unix. Whereas in Windows you don't (by design) need to worry much about how it all works (it's designed to be used without thought or understanding), still now in Linux to get to grips with how you want your computer to work requires considerable knowledge and understanding. I find this is true even for an "old hand" like myself. What it must be like to come up against it in all its modern glory for the first time, without previous basic Unix-type experience, I find it hard to imagine.

Colin has given us a list of 18 questions, which could probably form the basis of a series of talks/demos, so I think he has well answered the challenge to come up with what he wants.

I'm not sure I understand all of them properly, and I think some of them can be given short answers (attempts below). Some of them could also be topics for extensive presentations. I've indicated with an asterisk ones where I could myself contribute at least a basic account (with two asterisks where I could go further) -- though I have to confess I'm rather short of time at the moment. ======================================================================= A beginners Linux course / talks perhaps some of the following could be covered. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 1) At any one time, in the Windows world there is really only one OS and one desktop. In the Linux world there are many dozens. A breakdown of what's available, which is better for certain tasks, what differences there are between them and covering which issues are significant to beginners. [Linux: basically one OS, but many desktops.] **2) How does Linux differ from Windows. Is this important? (Only a very little politics, I mean in broad operational tasks) [Not that I' know enough about Windows to detail technical differences; but it wouldn't take long, demonstrating various things possible on Linux, to show that (a) there are many differences; (b) they are important.] 3) Do all Linux flavours use the same disk operating system? How does this compare to FAT & NTFS etc. [There is no longer a unique filesystem type. Previously, "ext2" was universal. Now there are also "ext3", journaling filesystems, "reiser" (a journaling type) at least. Linux can also read from and write to other types of filesystem, such as MSDOS, FAT, VFAT, Apple, ..., though they're not "native".] 4) Linux flavours - is it best to stick to one, better to run more than one for different tasks etc. [Here it's mainly a matter of what you get on with rather than what they can do -- Linux flavours don't differ much in what functional capabilities they can support, as opposed to cosmetic differences which are kaleidoscopic. Different packaged distributions do, however, differ in what they decide to put in the box.] *5) Given we do not want to become system administrators, and are home users, discuss "what" we need to learn to (1) get started, (2) progress to a moderate level of expertise. i.e. at what point is a knowledge of command line commands absolutely necessary - if it is. [Once you appreciate what the underlying operating system is really about, you'll understand very vividly that the "command line" is the heart of the whole business; I include shell scripts which are basically "batch files" of command lines.] *6) A beginner's lecture on what Linux is, how it differs from Unix, if the difference between Linux variants is important or not. Can you load a Unix program on a Linux system if the need arose? [Linux and Unix are basically the same thing, just as all vaccuum cleaners are -- which is why you can call Linux "unix" just as you can call any vaccuum cleaner a "hoover". However, both differ from Windows much as a hoover differs from a dustpan and brush. However, "loading" a generic Unix program onto a Linux system generally means compiling it from source code on the system you intend to use it on. This also applies to different "flavours" of Linux, and to different (earlier of later) versions of Linux (though that's also true of Unix). However, the main distributors of Linux systems also distribute compiled "binaries" of various programs which can just be unpacked onto the system.] *7) A run down of the Linux directory structure - where programs are, where your data should go. What goes in the other areas. What we can mess with. What we shouldn't. [Really quite a big one this, and best addressed by a real expert.] 8) How to manage the system / how to handle backups. Is there a built in backup program, if not discuss 3rd party options. [There are builtin programs, "Unix tools", which you can use to roll your own backup system. However, doing this properly requires expertise and experience in coordinating the various tools which are part and parcel of a Linux/Unix system. There are also 3rd party solutions where someone else has thought out the complications for you.] *9) How to install programs. How to delete a program. How to upgrade a program. What's and when to use a binary/source/rmp/deb install? 10) How to flatten a hard disk, if I want to try out a different version of Linux. [Not sure I understand, but if you mean what I think then the installation process normally invites you to re-format the drive, which has that effect. But it's also possible to install more than one version of Linux on the same system, with the "lilo" boot-manager giving you the choice of which one to boot into. Provided you have enough disk space, of course.] *11) After installing a new or second hard disk - how to fdisk / format (windows terms I'm afraid) once it's installed. Learn which files can be moved to the new disk, which can't, or doesn't it matter? [fdisk -- Linux command as well! -- is straightforward enough, though care is advised. Your second question has many ramifications.] 12) An in depth of how 3rd party programs are installed. How to do it, how to set them up, etc. E.g. some seem allied to Red Hat - if they are, can they still be loaded and run in another's Linux version etc. [Usually such programs come with a file called "INSTALL" or "README.INSTALL" which gives full instructions for what to do. Sometimes this is a simple as "change directory to ... and enter the command ./install, then answer the questions." Or the "deb", "rpm", ... package manager will automate the whole thing.] 13) Show us the different desktops - KDE, Gnome & others etc., with a discussion about their differences. Discuss whether its useful to have different desktops installed for different functions. **14) Discuss simple console line commands. Do we really need these? What can they do that an equivalent software pop up window can't? [You do need them. A popup window truly equivalent to a given command line would of course do exactly the same thing: that's what "equivalent" means. But it's the flexibility arising from the many options to a command, and above all the fact that many different commands can be chained -- "piped" -- in a single command which gives the command line its enormous power. You're not going to find this, in all its possibilities, pre-packaged in someone's pre-cooked menu system.] *15) Explain what X windows is. (I think this is what it was called.) 16) How to open multiple windows, that reopen where they were opened before. Is this a problem with my version of Linux, or a KDE issue, or what? Last OS I used that worked properly was OS/2. [I don't think I understand this question.] *17) How to set up an old PC as a firewall / email handling box on a simple home network. 18) How to install fonts. Xandros seems poor here - maybe that's only Xandros.

Software demonstrations : ------------------------- 1) Open Office - well why not? By someone who knows the similarities / differences, and can demo a few interesting advanced features. **2) A look at other options for word processor. Vi is often mentioned but is said to be complex. Is this so? [Vi is not so much a word processor in the sense a Windows user would understand as an editor for text files -- think of it as a grown-up "notepad". Basic use of vi is very simple, once you get the hang of its two-mode ("command" and "insert") way of working. However, its more advanced features have incredible power for manipulating text in a programmatic fashion. There's even a demo of vi, all on its own, re-writing and re-writing a block of characters so as to implement the game of 'Hanoi'. There are "conventional" (WYSIWIG) word-processors available, e.g. in OpenOffice and StarOffice, and stand-alone prgrams like Ted (edits RTF files) and a relatively recent interesting one called "textmaker". However, the traditional strength of unix in document preparation lie in so-called "typesetting" programs: troff/groff, TeX/LaTeX/etc, SGML (known as docbook in Linux) and more recently XML etc. Typically these are "two-pass" operations: first you prepare a source file (which is plain text with plain-text markup: use vi for this if you like it), and then you submit this to the formatter which produces properly laid-out text. The control and power you have over what goes on the page, and where, with these is simply on a different level from what goes on in Word. I can do a demo of groff; and it would be worth trying to get Jonathan Fine from Cambridge LUG to do his TeX demo. Both of these are intended somewhat to show off the capabilities.] 3) Apache - yes I'd like to have and run a server at home to simulate an ISP, with ancillary software integrated. A simple look at all this would be interesting. *4) Demo of Windows applications running on Linux boxes. So terrible? [I could do a demo of VMWare: emulates PC hardware in software so as to create a "virtual machine" into which you can boot anything you could install on a naked PC. The VM runs on the Linux system, and Windows runs inside theVM. Basically indistinguisbale from standalone Windows. Meanwhile Linux is running the whole show, and you can easily flip away from the Windows VM to do anything else you would normally do in Linux.] 5) MySQL - A number of web sites seems to use it, a basic starter would be good. Is it a good GP database for storing home user info on? 6) PHP - often allied with MySQL. Another basic starter, and good to demo what it can and can't do.

Best wishes, Ted.

-------------------------------------------------------------------- E-Mail: (Ted Harding) Ted.Harding@nessie.mcc.ac.uk Fax-to-email: +44 (0)870 167 1972 Date: 10-Jul-03 Time: 02:08:59 ------------------------------ XFMail ------------------------------