[ILUG] Holding newbies by the willie^H^H^H^H^H^H hand

[Wynne, Conor]

I can just see the point from both sides. Personally I had an awfull time
getting to grips with man pages - at the beginning

the find command for example. man find is a bit mental :), man man is a bit
metal actually but at least an example is given at the bottom.

When one has been using linux/unix for a wee while and starting to get to
grips with how things work, one tends to forget how difficult the learning
curve was in the beginning. I have been guilty of this in the past when
explaining concepts to newbies. Obviously its my teaching skills that suck
:)

With regards to linux, there really is everything you could ever wan't on
the net or online docs - man/even howt-o's in some distros, etc etc.,
finding its another matter. 
Anyway, yes you are quite right, but a little bit of patience goes a long
way - the last thing we wan't to do is shy people away - right?

I would like to be involved in a newbies course "someday", its just the
preparation that will take an age. But, if there is enough interest and
other people help out, we could do it. There is still a massive amount of
stuff I wan't to learn and could learn while teaching stuff. An immediate
concern for me is "Why can't I get DRI working for my Voodoo5?" Its wrecking
my head big time. I have RTFM'd and googled but I obviously don't understand
it :(

This is what I plan working on : pearl, proper scripting as opposed to my
mickey mouse scritping, c programming, and thats for starters. 
My wife is starting a 16month IT postgrad tonight and 60% of the course is
programming. So I shall have to study with her as she knows squat about
computers - which I admit is totaly my fault for doing everything myself.

She is nowhere near as bad as my ma though. I setup mail for my ma (under
doze), sat and explained exactly how it all works for a half hour or so, at
the end she picked up the mouse and started talking into it - "can I have my
mail please?".
She then got really annoyed that it didn't do anything, threw the mouse on
the floor and wen't back to her typewriter. 

Later geeks,
CW

What ya mean expect better from me? Are you mad, don't listen to me, I talk
bollox :) 
See above...
--------------------------------

Jeez Conor - I'd expect better from you :-) Why on earth repeat parts of man
pages on this list ?



Niall