Re: How can the OS autodetect that a user is a newbie and offer help?
On Wednesday 18 October 2006 05:41, you wrote:
> On 2006-10-17, Goswin von Brederlow
> <brederlo@informatik.uni-tuebingen.de> wrote:
> [snip]
>
> > Anyway, the usual way to detect a newbie and give help to them seems
> > to be to assume everyone a newbie and give little hints, startup tips,
> > ... till they learn enough to turn them off. For examples see gimp or
> > mc.
> >
> > PS: One of the hints better be how to turn the hints off. :)
>
> Someone suggested to me off-list that perhaps all we need is to provide
> a pointer to more newbie help in /etc/issue. Perhaps that would be the
> easiest to implement, and the easiest for users to disable :-), no?
As already suggested, desktop environments could/should have a help/tips
display that's turned on by default for new users.
What's really needed is better help for newbies dumped unexpectedly at the
command-line because X wasn't installed/properly configured/didn't start.
I'd suggest only 1-2 lines of login help in /etc/issue, and command-line
help (equal to 1-2 lines of text saying type xxx for help) in /etc/motd.
xxx might display a help file/command line guide, or start a basic tutorial,
or a special newbie shell environment. At its simplest it could just show
a 80x24 page of help text containing basic commands and pointers to more
help.
Andrew
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