Don --

No doubt you have heard the saying "give a man a fish and he eats for a day, but teach a man to fish and he eats for a lifetime" (or its corollary, "give a man a fish and he eats for a day, but teach a man to fish and you'll never see him again.").

While I don't have specific tutorial sites to offer -- this is where Google is your friend -- your e-mail touches on an issue that is not addressed enough in Free/Open Source Software circles, in my opinion, and where the folks organizing SFD could help.

Let's not fall into the trap that users who come to GNU/Linux and FOSS are complete idiots who need to be spoonfed everything they need to know ("Step one: Turn on your computer by locating the power button and pressing it."). After all, they're smart enough to realize that they have alternatives to Windows (and MacOS), which is why they want to try GNU/Linux and *BSD, and as such their curiosity will lead them to read the tutorials that are out there. The jargon/lingo/language will be picked up in the process.

While I don't have specific sites to refer to -- again, this is where Google is your friend -- I  recall when I started out in Linux/FOSS four years ago that there were many tutorials -- some more difficult than others -- but the learning curve for someone with at least average intelligence (and I count myself in this category) was not steep at all, and grasping the terminology was not a hurdle. In my own experience, if one tutorial was incomprehensible (due to the level or poor writing or lack of organization), I found another that I could understand.

Do some tutorials out there need to be simplified and/or better organized? Absolutely. Are the better written ones out there? Yep.

What I guess would be a good start would be to get the links to the better written ones together in one place where people can get to them -- a wiki page hosted by the SFD site perhaps? It might make for a good project for the SFD folks to take on, if they're up to it, and while I can't spearhead it, I'd help work on it.

Larry Cafiero

On Sat, Sep 18, 2010 at 8:38 AM, don warner saklad <don.saklad@gmail.com> wrote:
Instructive info with the easiest of learning curves.
Where are the simplest easiest to understand instructive materials for
neophytes moving to GNU/Linux. Especially weblinks cautious about the
use of jargon or explain carefully any jargon used ! For example
avoiding the jargon term distros, jargon not used by consumers
generally.

Meaningful advocating.
Advocating is a lot easier and meaningful if it includes how do I
setup GNU/Linux now?...


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