About switching to Linux

[Freston]

#!/bin/confession

We at work are switching to thin clients, making most of our workstations obsolete. My boss wanted to give them to our colleagues in change for a donation to a charity. I volunteered to put Linux on them. My boss doubted that this was a good idea, but I got the go-ahead anyway.

So I set up a little hands free server that could automatically push images to empty workstations. It all worked fine, and all was great. I installed and tested 17 workstations that day with a Linux image. A bit overdone one might say. No way there's that much demand for Linux boxen.

Now last Tuesday word came out over the intranet that these machines are available to the staff for a small donation, and that there's choice between an empty machine or one with Linux.
Lo and behold! I never expected to see this! In two days time 18 requests have come in, 14 of which explicitly want it with Linux installed
(Two others make no mention, and only two want one without Linux)

At this rate, we'll run out of Linux boxen before the weekend is over



I'm actually a bit overwhelmed by this all. As it seems I'm the one going to introduce all these people to their wonderful new system. Hence this post culminates in a question. If I am going to introduce people to Linux in five minutes, what should be my main focus?
Layout filesystem. Package manager. How to connect to the internet. Perifials. That sort of thing. I'd be very interested to hear from people who recently switched. What where the most difficult things as new Linux user? And what info is most useful?

[elija]

Without a doubt - installation and package management. It seems to cause the most problems with Windows users being so used to downloading an executable from the net.

[Freston]

Yeah, discussing the Package Manager and repo is indeed a good idea.

One of the things I'm afraid will cause issues is the permission system. If you know it, it's all logical and working fine. But if you're new I can imagine it feels a bit like a barrier (which it is by definition ). Sharing files between two accounts can be a pain if you don't know how.

There are several things I want to discuss with these new users. And I like to be prepared, because I know myself, I'll be telling them to `modprobe fuse` before they figured out the screensaver. That's all good and well and there's not a dear mother that can help it, but I think I should probably explain some basics before handing over the machine.

You know, new users will probably be concerned with details such as how to set up the mail client. They wont be asking about the difference between the root accont and the user account. So while of course I'm open to questions about what the user wnats to know, I also need to be prepared to tell them the things they should know.
I'm not completely unprepared and have written a readme that will be put on the users desktop. But I thought I'd run it by you guys and galls, see what comes up.

So far I'm addressing
- installation and package management
- table of equivalents (Windows Linux)
- accounts and permissions
- accessing external filesystems
- short overview of the filesystem hierarchy (and absence of drives)
- hardware and drivers
- open vs closed source, an overview

[jayd512]

Mail Client = Evolution

I don't even use a mail client, but in setting one up there are only minor cosmetic differences between Evo and Oulook Express. So there will be little chance of confusion there. And while I'm sure you already thought of this for the permissions/installation deal, why not give them a /home or /usr directory with limited permisions, but perhaps a /tmp directory that they can run wild with? I work in a Windows environment but we are provided with a 'roaming' Z:\ directory that we can load with our extra programs or files.

[rokytnji]

A Simple Terminal tutorial. That was my hangup.

[daacosta]

Printing is also a huge issue... Address that as well...

Normal office tools: Word processing, schedule manager, spreadsheets, presentations, emailing, browsing

[monday90]

Think as a Windows user. Package management is a big one here. In Windows if you want to install a fancy image manipulation program you go and buy Photoshop put the CD in and either let it auto run or browse the CD and choose setup.exe. With Linux you need to find a piece of software to do what you want ( ie google photo/image manipulation on linux). Then install it using the package manager. EG apt-get install gimp or through synaptic or if you have a week or two to kill emerge gimp.

Understanding this BIG difference in philosophy (paid for vs free) is kind of fundamental. Trying to explain it can be a BIG can of worms though. Depending on how advanced they are I would start with " this is the same as your start menu" and " this is how you install stuff" followed by " this is how you save OOO docs so they can be read by office". Focus on what it can do IE Firefox=IE kopete/pidgin=messenger xine=powerdvd (but better) K3b=Nero. People like familiarity, they are prepared to change but they need convincing. The cash saved by using Linux over windows is usually sufficient. For the sticklers focus on no-need for antivirus and better security. That should give you 95% of your audience.

[elija]

If all else fails show off the desktop cube. Windows users seem to have a Pavlovian reaction to it!

[Freston]

Thanks for all your replies! It may not be apparently obvious, but it has helped me where to put emphasis. Which is important to me because I reckoned I'd have between 5 and 10 minutes per person and had to be efficient and clear... rather than elaborate and easily distracted as is my nature

But listen to this. Let this be a fair warning to you all!
You are trained and armored to deal with every known kind of slashing and piercing weapon. But then, on the day of the duel, when you're lying puking in the bushes, you realize your opponent is not a swordsman but a poisoner.

Really, with all my preparation the one thing I hadn't thought of was that people are <emphases>not interested</emphases>

LOL, sorry 'bout the rant. I feel better now. I should have known. People wanted it because it was free (as in beer), not because it held the promise of a rich and new experience of free (as in freedom) computing. I think that with more than half of them I only got the chance to quickly say "don't EVER run as root and read the README on your desktop" before the end of the users attention span was reached. I wish I was exaggerating

[glaston]

Ohh man.
I sat here and made this lengthy post in response to this thread a couple nights ago.
The premise was that you should actually put everything in a text file on the machines desktop because people will likely forget everything you say before they boot the machine up for the 1st time.
I passed out for a few minutes before hitting submit, and when I woke up I felt like a different person and hated every word I wrote and deleted it.

I should've left it.