The office where I work has mostly converted to free software, but sometimes people don't know what website to go to to look for help.
It seems that each distro has it's own forums, and most projects have their own forums or mailing lists, and then there are some general sites like linuxquestions.org (or google.com/linux).
These are great for you and I, but not for someone who doesn't know the name of the project that develops the application they're using, or for someone who wouldn't think that they have to search three sets of forums. Can anyone recommend an umbrella site or portal that I could send them to?
Thanks.
Ciaran O'Riordan ciaran@fsfe.org writes:
It seems that each distro has it's own forums, and most projects have their own forums or mailing lists, and then there are some general sites like linuxquestions.org (or google.com/linux).
My first response is to lament the rise of such one-site-only, non-standard forums at the expense of categorised, distributed, standard-protocol Usenet forums. It does contribute to the problem of knowing where to start.
These are great for you and I
I find them far inferior to Usenet, myself, and am very glad for the huge wealth of such forums standardised in access by the NNTP interface of the Gmane service.
The office where I work has mostly converted to free software, but sometimes people don't know what website to go to to look for help.
It seems that each distro has it's own forums, and most projects have their own forums or mailing lists, and then there are some general sites like linuxquestions.org (or google.com/linux).
These are great for you and I, but not for someone who doesn't know the name of the project that develops the application they're using, or for someone who wouldn't think that they have to search three sets of forums. Can anyone recommend an umbrella site or portal that I could send them to?
Maybe the Free Software Directory (http://directory.fsf.org/), it contains bug reporting, and help mailing addresses.
At Tue, 29 Jul 2008 13:02:01 +0100, Ciaran O'Riordan wrote:
The office where I work has mostly converted to free software, but sometimes people don't know what website to go to to look for help.
I think the most important thing is to explain them how to search/find/access *and read* the documentation of the package they're having trouble with as is installed on their system.
90% of the problems with newbies come from the fact that they don't read documentation, and they're generally impatient. This is especially true for young people. (Of course this has deeper roots, as people tend to "fix" things without realizing what the "fix" entails or does; this is a result of the tendency to turn all humankind into consumers.) The other 10% are people who read online (web) documentation not realizing that it is for a different version than the one installed.
I doubt that there will ever be a site that sums up all the knowledge of a free system, and I personally consider browsing web sites for such a purpose time consuming and useless activity.
People are just unwilling to learn, and this is not about to change any time soon :-{
In depends on which area of help you are looking for. However, generally, a quick search on Google with the right keywords usually help.
That said, an inhouse documentation of most common FAQ would go a long long way. An intranet wiki can help spin group dynamics in using Linux as well.
HTH
KwangErn
On Tue, Jul 29, 2008 at 2:02 PM, Ciaran O'Riordan ciaran@fsfe.org wrote:
The office where I work has mostly converted to free software, but sometimes people don't know what website to go to to look for help.
It seems that each distro has it's own forums, and most projects have their own forums or mailing lists, and then there are some general sites like linuxquestions.org (or google.com/linux).
These are great for you and I, but not for someone who doesn't know the name of the project that develops the application they're using, or for someone who wouldn't think that they have to search three sets of forums. Can anyone recommend an umbrella site or portal that I could send them to?
Thanks.
Ciarán O'Riordan, +32 477 36 44 19, http://ciaran.compsoc.com/
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