[ILUG] Linux

[Rick Moen]

Quoting ccostelloe at flogas.ie (ccostelloe at flogas.ie):

> ...but I would stick to either Gnome or KDE (and mention the others)
> so that they became more familiar with one, rather than being
> half-familiar with both, as either should be equally competent for a
> general Linux course.

Let's review for a moment, please.  Isn't this supposed to be a training
course for people aiming to be technically competent?  That is, isn't
the aim for trainees to emerge with some good fundamental understanding
of the subject?

If that is the case, then it would be smarter to have trainees operate
in a clean, technically-comprehensible environment -- one devoid of
"desktop environment" superstructures -- such as unadorned metacity, 
unadorned kwin, xfce, blackbox, icewm, etc.  

By "technically-comprehensible", I mean no offence to partisans of KDE,
GNOME, GNUStep, etc.:  I merely mean that someone attempting to learn
Linux at a technical level should be given a fighting chance at being
able to read the output of "ps auxw" on his workstation and
understanding what the frell everything is and why he's choosing to run
it.  Plunking down a novice in front of the typical spew of processes
spawned off by (e.g.) a typical KDE3 session startup script is a recipe
for bewilderment.

Once a user understands basic Linux functionality, process management
and the X11 model -- _adding_ to that foundation the concepts of session
managers, CORBA brokers, desktop manager, etc. is trivial.

Throwing that other stuff at a novice Linux technician for no better
reason than they're being default configurations of some distribution is
dismal planning at its finest.