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rowanparker
April 27th, 2006, 07:44 AM
Hello,
Please can you read my guide and give me some feedback.
http://www.rowanparker.com/index.php?page=Tutorial_-_Getting_Started_With_Linux

And if anyone can help with the dial-up section, that would be nice.

Thanks, Rowan.

Sef
April 27th, 2006, 07:56 AM
Use a white background with black type. The current set up of black background and red letters (with a few blue ones) is hard to read.

PatrickMay16
April 27th, 2006, 08:05 AM
Use a white background with black type. The current set up of black background and red letters (with a few blue ones) is hard to read.
No! Use a black background or dark gray with white or bright gray type. And maybe a larger font size.

A monitor isn't like a bit of paper; it's ommiting light at you. Don't believe me? Turn off the lights in your room at night, then open a webpage with a white background or something.

Whoa!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Exclaimation mark!!!!!!

This is a pretty nice guide for a beginner. I notice you made a few punctuation mistakes here and there, but nothing too big. Might want to fix those, to make it a little more professional.

Also, I notice that you say you turn off the screensavers because it makes your computer freeze and need restarting. Let me ask you, what video card do you have?

helpme
April 27th, 2006, 08:08 AM
Hi,
first off, nice article.

Some suggestions though.
- The red text on a black backgound is very hard to read, at least for me.
- In the section about making space for an Ubuntu install you should mention that it's possible to resize a windows partition with the ubuntu installer:
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/HowtoPartition?
- Not really important, but simply a pet peeve of mine. You state that in Linux many things require the command line. While this is true for Ubuntu, I don't think that's really true for other distributions, like for example Suse with Yast.
- I know it's a hot issue, but I don't think you should call Automatix a must. After all, there've been many discussions about this tool, so maybe telling people that you've had good experiences with it would be better.
- Finally, I think what's missing is a part about installing applications on Ubuntu, that is, about synaptic and gnome-app-install.

Again, I really liked the article, so don't take my suggestions the wrong way. They are just that suggestions about things that I think will improve your already good article.

_simon_
April 27th, 2006, 08:10 AM
Haven't read it all yet but my first thought is to remove your age. Some people might think.... what would a 14 year old know about linux?!, return to google and find another site to help them.

Instead of hyperlinking screenshots like you have I'd insert a small image of the screenshot and hyperlink to a bigger one.

Spelling error here:

"Next is the partitioner, and the most crucial bit to get right, because if you fail you could loose everything."

It's "lose" :)

and another

"You have a choice here, the Linux default type is ext3 but I always use reiserfs because it's more stable (in my opinion) so you can use either of thoose."

I'd not mention the screensaver crashing your pc. To a new user that might put them off... if Ubuntu can't even handle a screensaver running I won't be trying that....

You might also want to mention grub on a floppy at the very, very beginning. Many people don't have floppy drives anymore, I know I haven't had one for well over 4 years now. If someone is blindly following your guide and suddenly realises they need a floppy drive and disk when they haven't got either... well that could be an issue.

Also I don't think you made it clear that your guide was on dual booting and what dual booting actually means.

Might be a good idea to go into a bit more detail after installation. i.e. how to add items to panels like quicklaunch in XP - remember you want to be able to show potential converts that they can do what they did in XP (and other version) in Ubuntu.

GreyFox503
April 27th, 2006, 09:26 AM
Nice guide. I don't have dialup, so I can't do much there. So here are my thoughts for improvement:

1) Change color scheme (contrast is good, but still is not right)

2) Take away your age.

3) Break the guide up into sections, perhaps even numbered steps, such as 1)Preparing for installation, 2) partitioning drive, etc.

4) Provide links to other helpful sites like the ubuntuforums, automatix page, and any other must-haves you've encountered.


EDIT: I'm looking forward to your Python tutorial. :) I don't know any Python.

woedend
April 27th, 2006, 09:55 AM
fix minor grammatical errors and structures.

Remove or reword entire first sentence.

Are you telling people they have to reinstall windows before installing ubuntu? no no no. This entire section about multiple partitions with windows should be addressed in its own section, more in depth, since 95% of anyone using this guide will be in that boat. And I would recommend using ubuntu's partitioner to resize rather than reinstalling windows(wtf?).

Great majority will not install grub on a floppy disk. I havent even owned a floppy disk in years sadly. Everything referring to such I think should be in its own section, as its confusing to me when pretending to know nothing about this.

Definetely wouldnt just send them to automatix. That doesn't do much for teaching. I would definetely make a repo list including universe and multiverse, with detail of how to add them, and how to use synaptic. synaptic i have found to be an invaluable tool and now much prefer it to command line.

kabus
April 27th, 2006, 10:33 AM
"Born and bred", not "born and bread". ;)

rowanparker
April 27th, 2006, 04:18 PM
Thanks very much for all the replies, I will look into a better colour scheme.
I will also tweak it a little more and over time add more to it (like install apps for instace). And sorry, I've never been any good at spelling :D.

About the resizing Windows partition, I was told the Linux could not deal with NTFS very well so thats why I put that. I will change it though.

Thanks everyone!, Rowan.

towsonu2003
April 27th, 2006, 04:25 PM
you might wanna mention winmodems in your dial up section, as almost all internal modems people would want to try are gonna be winmodems (f'ing hard to make them work in linux)... have a look at (and link to?) the second link in my signature -dial up wiki page-.

seemed like a nice guide to me :)

Caligula
April 27th, 2006, 07:01 PM
Just a small correction...
~ means the home directory, not the working directory.
Everything between : and $ is your working directory, and ~ is just a shortcut to /home/user, which is the default working directory...

rowanparker
May 3rd, 2006, 10:25 PM
Ok, the tutorial has been upgraded.

Please check it out, I have tried to include most people's suggestions.

http://www.rowanparker.com/index.php?page=Tutorial_-_Getting_Started_With_Linux

Thanks, Rowan.

steve.horsley
May 3rd, 2006, 11:21 PM
I know you don't want to hear this, but your white on black colour scheme makes it really hard to read. So much so that I gave up after a few sentences. I later went back and found that it's much easier to read if you type Ctrl-A. Your readers should be concentrating on the message, and having to work hard to extract each word makes that more difficult and stressful.

The sentence In Linux command line is used... should probably start a new paragraph - it is starting a new subject to the previous sentences on toolbars.

A good start.

GreyFox503
May 3rd, 2006, 11:40 PM
Looks a lot better, I like the color scheme and the layout.

I would consider adding more screenshots. Everyone likes screenshots, even if they're not very useful. And it helps to break up the long sections of text with some kind of visual indicator.

dmacdonald111
May 4th, 2006, 12:16 AM
Haven't read it all yet but my first thought is to remove your age. Some people might think.... what would a 14 year old know about linux?!, return to google and find another site to help them.


I know from experience that if I need any help with linux, the group of people that I ask for help from have an average age of 15 :D Makes me feel like a complete moron, but hey, get used to it after a while! rofl - oh! and my three year old niece can use my computer with no problems, but get my friends on it and they're like;

them: How do I get onto the internet?
me: open the browser
them: what? with the mouse?
me: yes.
them: which button do I press?
me: left. twice.
them: this is too hard <frustrated mumbles - passes computer to neice>

rofl!

rowanparker
May 14th, 2006, 12:05 PM
Just a quick note.
The link has changed from www2.rowanparker.com to www.rowanparker.com.
So now the link is http://www.rowanparker.com/index.php?page=Tutorial_-_Getting_Started_With_Linux

Thanks, Rowan.