On Tue, 13 Sep 2005, John Ferrell wrote:

> I should have said "my problem"!
> It is not the quality or the volume. I just cannot get the knack of getting 
> where I need to be.
> I don't think I am alone though.

I am not sure what problems people have when they try out linux, but in 
my limited (by about 10 years of continuous use) experience, it works 
like this:

1 - person sees appealing linux experience described on a mailing list
2 - person decides to try it out
3 - person finds more appealing linux experiences from more mailing 
lists and tries to apply same, while searching for solutions for his 
problems.
4 - disappointment follows
5 - person gives up

Steps 3 through 5 are wrong imho. The vast majority of linux write-ups 
and archived messages out there are from people who are not necessarily 
apt to explain how things are done. They often omit a few steps or take 
a modified installation for granted. The 'only' right way to do it is to 
stick like glue to the instructions of the version you are installing, 
to the official line of the distribution you have chosen.

The 'right' way to start imho, is to get a taste of how it works with an 
all-in-one installation-less (!!!) version like knoppix or a live cd 
from other distributions AND IGNORE THE RELATIVELY SLOW SPEED that will 
result when booting and running. Even if you have a cdrom-exploding x64 
cdrom drive it is at least 10 times slower than a modern hard disk, and 
all live cdrom linux programs are compressed and need to be decompressed 
on the fly on top of that. Once the installation will be on hard disk, 
it will be about 10 times faster (let's say significantly faster), 
including bootup.

After that one can install a proper version (the one tried or another). 
Again: stick like glue to the exact instructions bundled with your 
distribution, until you know what you are doing. Do not install packages 
from other distributions. Packages with the same suffix (e.g. .rpm) are 
NOT necessarily compatible with your system. Do not modify things you do 
not understand. There are significant configuration differences between 
distributions. What applies to one may ruin another. Red Hat, Suse and 
Debian put and use configuration systems in different places. Applying 
experience gained with one, with another, may lead to frustration.

I started with Slackware 3 (linux kernel 1.2.13 or so) nearly 10 years 
ago and I have the experience of tinkering with command line scripts way 
past midnight because of slightly misleading instructions in an obscure 
email found in in some mailing list. Do not go there, it will ruin your 
experience. Get the system up and operating as designed, then you will 
be able to enjoy it and modify it at will.

The live linux cd is the way to go for starts (no installation). The 
live linux cd that got me going was a Lasermoon linux demo from 
lasermoon.co.uk (long defunct) that came on the cover cd for PC Windows 
(!) magazine in ~1995 or 96, and required two floppy disks to be burned 
to boot it. I still have that cd but I am afraid to mount it since it 
has a crack in the lexan and it could explode at high rpm.

Peter
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