On Fri, 7 Dec 2001 at 07:18, Rene Torres wrote: > Making Linux look harder than it is by Robin "Roblimo" Miller > http://www.newsforge.com/article.pl?sid=01/12/05/1259245&mode=thread
I was reading this and was laughing to (or at) myself. Why? Because this article talks to, and about, me. And I think to (and about) a lot of oldbies in PLUG, too. It's not that we're evil for being the way we are. When you know a "better" way of doing things, you want nothing but the best for everyone you help/teach right? Miller's article, however, points out an extremely valid point. Unless you expect to be there to do every little nitpicky reconfiguration for somebody (ie: you want neither to teach someone how to fish nor to give him/her a fish; you want to be there to fish for that someone forever), it's important to let go and allow a particular person to find his/her own preferences in doing things. Some prefer Pine, others prefer mutt. But a lot will probably want some GUI clint like ... Evolution maybe? And the list of things you can choose from goes on and on. Until now my girlfriend of over a year very very very rarely uses Linux. And when she does so it's when she's logged on to the server via SSH from her Windows98 box at home via PuTTY (mostly because of my prodding). But there is a Linux installation on her second hard drive that I painstakingly set up (well, sort of). Why isn't she using it? Well, it's fortunately not because she's stupid. It's because I wanted nothing but the best for her. And in my narrow geeky point of view, that best is (was) Debian/Unstable. Obviously too much for her, a pre-beginner. So while I've filled up a lot of blanks in the setup procedure, she can't really do more than boot it and say "uhhhh...". She had nothing to do with the setting up of the system, and because it's (Debian/Unstable) not designed for "ordinary mortals", she's having a hard time finding her way through setting up the missing stuff from where I left off. She probably needs (or can benefit from) something that she, together with my help in the sidelines (this is important, I shouldn't grab the keyboard and do the setup myself), can set up, understand, use and -ENJOY-. I'm thinking maybe Libranet, if I want to keep the "Debian spirit". Or heck, Mandrake since all the GUI lovers obviously enjoy it. I have the ISOs. I have the CD-Rs (in her favorite shade of purple, to boot!). Why didn't I just burn them for her and made a date out of the one-on-one, personalized installfest, right? Well because I wanted nothing but the best for her. Nothing but the best, in my view. Obviously a slight mismatch: I'm a geek. She's a smart, but normal (and absolutely beautiful) human being. I wish I figured this out much earlier. But at least now I have a Christmas present already. CD writer ready, 1, 2, 3 ... burn! :) --> Jijo -- Federico Sevilla III :: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Network Administrator :: The Leather Collection, Inc. GnuPG Key: <http://jijo.leathercollection.ph/jijo.gpg> _ Philippine Linux Users Group. Web site and archives at http://plug.linux.org.ph To leave: send "unsubscribe" in the body to [EMAIL PROTECTED] To subscribe to the Linux Newbies' List: send "subscribe" in the body to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
