Re: easyLinux Beta.

[jfm2@club-internet.fr]

> 
> I have a couple of pages of notes I made while installing Indy but they are
> almost a month old, and judging from the list traffic and probably not
> relevant anymore. However there is one thing I haven't seen discussed yet,
> online (meaning on disk) documentation, more below.
> 
> At 10:48 AM 07/02/99 -0000, jfm wrote:
> 
> >The specific feature of EasyLinux is the X based install.
> >
> >First this isn't new: Redhat tried it in 95 or 96 and ended going back
> >to using a curses based install.
> 
> I for one have no problem with a curses based install, as long as it works
> and is adaptable.
> 
> >fact nearly useless.  I would much prefer an install allowing the user
> >to configure PPP so he can immediately ask for help in case of need
> >instead an X-based one.  Also installs are not half as importanat as
> 
> Agreed, PPP should have an option to be configured at install time.
> However, consider the situation where the new user does not already have an
> internet account.
> 

I know there are people in LANs, people without net accounts and
people who don't have the info at hand.

> >to configure PPP so he can immediately ask for help in case of need
>                                         ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
> I don't know much about Linux (yet), but I am capable of figuring things
> out provided I know where the resource material is. From my first 3

I had to live the situation where you are desperately in need of help
and you are cut out of the world because networking or mail/news is
unconfigured and you have to learn how to do it.

> iterations of installing RH and Indy, with many restarts in Win95 so I
> could read on-internet docs, I eventually discovered: 
> 
> (excerpt from my install notes)
> inst> Installing the html How-To's only sort of worked because except for the
> inst> index page, all of the urls point to sunsite. However if you use the
> link
> inst> below as your start page, you can surf the how-to's without being
> online.
> inst>
> inst> file:/usr/doc/HOWTO/other-formats/html/HOWTO-INDEX-3.html
> inst>
> inst> This brings me to a point I'd like to mention. There's a little too much
> inst> focus on going online to get information. There's at least 10mb of
> installed
> inst> documentation and it should be clear to users that there are local
> resources
> inst> as well as the splendid online resources. A caveat tho': a lot of the
> inst> HowTo's seem to be rather dated. It's probably a monumental task, but it

Network information is the latest version, unfortunately CDs who
update automatically are still uninvented.  :-)

> inst> might be a good time to try and arrange them by age or relevance to

> current
> inst> distributions or something.
> 

User is confronted to dozens of docs and all of them are at the same
level: the one of interest only to 1% of users (experts all of them)
and the ones vital for 90% of beginners.

-- 
			Jean Francois Martinez

Project Independence: Linux for the Masses
http://www.independence.seul.org