On being a new Linux user
There are things that will probably be constant in the life of every new Linux user:
- You will ask questions. — But of course, it’s something new! You have that sense of wonder. That or you might feel really clueless sometimes. There’d be a lot of times that you might feel alone but there’s always someone you could ask. It could be a friend or a colleague. It could also be indirectly done by searching for the answers online. It’s just that you’d have to breakdown your questions into combinations of keywords that you need to enter in a search engine and you’d come up with answers from various people.
- You will read a lot. — From man pages, to newbie guides, to Linux users’ mailing lists and forums and even printed books. There’s almost no escaping it. After all, you have so many new terms to learn and understand if you’re tweaking something or if you’re encountering errors. One advantage of all this reading is that you sharpen your mind and add knowledge into it.
- There are some of those who get quite lucky. — That or they were smart enough to do research. They’re not some of the really adventurous types who just install something and hope it works. No, they checked everything: from the hardware which are supported to the various apps that could be installed and even the availability of repositories or sources of the binaries.
- You sometimes feel dumb, or a bit bleh, or something like it. — But the thing is that if you’re not totally familiar with something, you could make blunders. Didn’t you ever have problems on Windows too? Sometimes people forget that. :P When you’re still building your experience and knowledge in using something, it could take a bit of time and patience. So for the times you feel down about not fixing something in Linux immediately, you’d manage. :) Just ask and maybe after that you’d build up your Linux-fu, so to speak.
- You have the urge to try out every distro out there. — Uh, you could try if you want. But if I were you, I’d stick to what looking for distros that might have what you’re looking for. :) Especially since there really are specialized distros for certain tasks like playing Go. If that’s what you want, or need, then go for it. :D
Have I missed anything? ;)
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POSTED IN: Geeky Fun, The Free World.
2 opinions for On being a new Linux user
Shawn S
Jan 2, 2008 at 1:45 pm
A new user may want to try every application they can. I know that when I started using Linux, I tried every major web browser, email client, and music player I could before picking out my favorites.
I’ve told several newbies to just go ahead and download the applications they want to try, and once they’ve found one they like, just remove the rest and use it.
Daniel Andrade
Jan 3, 2008 at 8:24 pm
It’s a good thing to try downloading everything you can till you find what you really like. You can use, for example, ubuntu, try everything, do everything without fear. After some months, try reinstalling your distro of choice and install only what you need.
I’ve wrote a article about some good things to do just after have ubuntu installed. You can take a look here:
http://www.danielandrade.net/2007/11/10/10-things-to-do-just-after-installing-ubuntu-710/
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