Cory I used to go to the Thursday clinic. It was a great "smoke and joke" session, i.e. I enjoyed the tech talk but I was just a hanger-on. I have since quit smoking and now I have a serious urge to get involved with Linux. It wasn't the people that discouraged me, someone helped me setup a duel boot dos/Linux box (which I subsequently wiped in my qwest for windows supremacy,) it was that I hadn't done my homework. Text based learning was never my strong point and now I work all the time so I can't get to the Thursday clinic.
As an analogy to the learning curve. I used to play a lot of chess and people would come up to me as chess novices. I would play them a game, give pointers, but they would quickly tumble to the bottom of the chess social hill, and that's o.k., because they needed to climb that hill themselves. I guess my feeling at the clinic was "hey, you haven't read your Red Hat Bible cover to cover YET!" Dexter put me on the right track when he gave me a copy of Mandrake 8.2. These new distros are much more user friendly. I blew it up a few times and he helped me get back on track. Now I can get past the command line, sort of. I recently bought a Matrox G550 video card because I wanted true 3D acceleration and I couldn't afford the high-end Nvidia. When I put the card in the Mandrake box I was back to command line. I spent several days of misery: G550 under WinME can't work OpenGL so I can't use Blender 3D rendering software; G550 under WinNT with SP5 works OpenGL but the Blender install craped out so it requires tweaking; WinXP pro cost $160 and the Palladium future would turn me into a Borg. As it was I decided to go back to Mandrake and face the command line, but, you know what, when I did a clean install of Mandrake 8.2 it found the card "no problem." Blender and Duel Head technology remain to be seen, but I have faith. The point I'm trying to make is that some would-be open source users are "command line adverse visual learners" (there's a piece of PC for ya, ha, ha.) I my case I have a mild form of dyslexia. That's my problem with text, although, as a former engineering tech I am great with numbers, I need my GUI fix. I know that window dressing uses compute cycles, but I bet there are a lot of people out there like me. BTW, recently open sourced Blender 2.5 is the "KILLER APP" that the Linux community has been looking for to increase its numbers! BAGGAB -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:eug-lug-admin@;efn.org]On Behalf Of Cory Petkovsek Sent: Thursday, October 24, 2002 4:48 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [Eug-lug]Looking for other Linux novices Master O Planet, The point of the euglug thursday clinics are supposed to provide you with exactly what you are seeking. Hopefully the environment is not making you feel uncomfortable in asking questions. It is very likely that the questions you ask have been asked by other people, even by those you ask. But there was a time when they did not know such things and its now time for them to share those answers with others. Your questions are important and not out of place. The two tracks are solely for the saturday presentations. Anyone is welcome at either track, regardless of skill. They are merely presentations and not work sessions. The clinics on thursdays are for both beginners and experts. Beginners come often with their system to get help setting up things. Just about two and a half years ago I showed up for the first time at the clinics with my laptop trying to get X configured. X 3.3.6 was the latest, and I couldn't figure out the modelines to get my display working. Another problem I had was trying to get exim to deliver my mail. Upon installing it I had chosen the option "no configuration, I understand my mail configuration will be broken until I configure it." For some reason, it just wouldn't deliver mail! One of the attendees was able to help me resolve the problem. Through the lug, I was able to work through problems as they came and eventually help others. Now I've incorporated linux into a large portion of my server room. I'm using it for a firewall, vpn, mail filter, web server, and file and print server. In addition I have a linux server on which I run several perl scripts I've written which replicate tens of thousands of graphic images across servers, monitor my internet line and email me the highlights of the Event Logs from my windows servers. The lug is a great place to gain lots of knowledge quickly. However there are a few things you need to do: 1) Come regularly. You get out of it what you put in to it. 2) Ask questions. Unasked questions are unanswered questions. 3) Watch what experienced people do. When you see someone typing someting on their system, watch! Ask them what they are up to. It's not a secret, otherwise they wouldn't be at the lug. Seek out other novices, that's great. But bring it to the lug. You and another want to setup two clients connecting to the same X server. Bring in your systems and work through your HOWTOs there. When you get stuck, fire off some questions and you'll see your learning bypassing all of the toughest obstacles. The point is to learn as much as you can, not to see how flat your head can be, banging it against the wall, right!? Cory On Thu, Oct 24, 2002 at 04:03:23PM -0700, Master O Planets wrote: > I am looking for other Linux beginners who want to build a workgroup. I've > been lurking on the edge of the mailing list. In and out of the > conversation for two years. I have to admit that I don't know much about > Linux because I've been clinging onto Windows. I recently upgraded my video > card, and due to some complexities, I almost ran for WinXP, but then there > is Palladium and all the crap M$ has pulled before! I contacted the card > makers forum and it appears there is a workable solution under Linux. > > I noticed some talk about a two track system: expert and beginner. I want > to see if there are other novices in the group that want to work on specific > problems and not feel afraid to ask the dumb questions. > > _______________________________________________ > Eug-LUG mailing list > [EMAIL PROTECTED] > http://mailman.efn.org/cgi-bin/listinfo/eug-lug _______________________________________________ Eug-LUG mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mailman.efn.org/cgi-bin/listinfo/eug-lug _______________________________________________ Eug-LUG mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mailman.efn.org/cgi-bin/listinfo/eug-lug
