Re: distro for novices
hi ya matt
On Tue, 14 Dec 2004, Matt Price wrote:
fun project .. too bad you're in toronto :-)
> teach a somewhat unusual coursee next semester: not history at all,
> but a kind of "technical self-sufficiency" not-for-credit
> community-based course in a local housing project. Students will
> asssemble their own computers, install an operating system, and learn
> how to use it.
goooood ..
hopefully, the mb, disks, cpu, mem, power supply, cables etc are all known
to be good ... so that when they build it, it sorta works
> The students will come from a pretty wide variety of backgrounds
i assume most folks want to get a computer to do:
a) connect to the internet
b) browse the net ( web browser )
c) read/send/reply to emails
d) read/write/edit *.doc and other files
e) antispam .. antivirus .. antiporn ..
f) security patches ... whats that from a confused gnubee[tm] :-)
- they probably want to know that they do NOT need to pay
microsoft duties/fees/blackmail
> Debian and quite love it; but I do all my sysad work on the command
> line and use the menu system very little, so I'm not sure my
> experience is especially relevant.
if you know command line ... you can fix/break most machines
- if the command is not available on antoher distro,
yu'd need to knwo what the equivalent command is
- if it's gui based, have fun figuring out which icon
does what and where that same icon-function got moved
in the gui
> I'm worried that's not the best approach for this class.
give the class what they want to learn/know ..
so that you get the "A" for teaching ability
> - novice computer users, who probably know how to use a web browser,
> an email client, and a mouse on windows, but little else;
so they can learn how to build their new/old pc from parts
and install the browser and emails
> - relatively slow hardware (hopefully not ancienct, but in any case
> not cutting edge);
installing a whole system from one cdrom is still a few minutes
- you should use s standalone live cdrom
- it solves the problem of not being able to install onto hardisk
- you will need a classroom server ( gateway ) from which to download
and install netscape/mozilla/.. openoffice, ....
> I'm not looking for beauty or even speed, really;
a K6-350 w/ 128MB of memory is plenty fast enough .... and NOT noticably
slow, untill you compile something
> I *am* looking for out-of-the-box usability,
sounds like you need to use "live (standalone) linux cd" to know that
hardware all works ...
- installing from cdrom to hardisk is a separate problem
- knoppix-live cd, suse-live cd, slackware-live cd...
( i'm not sure if there is a debian-live cd )
( "live cd" is NOT the installer cd or rescue cd )
\\\
\\\ time will be your biggest enemy ... everything takes time
\\\ and you do NOT want to be debugging silly things like dead power
\\\ supply or kernels that do not support the hardware ( ide, svga, nic )
\\\
> compatibility with both old and new hardware
> (especially plugin devices like mp3 players,
ogle, mplayer, vlc, etc and other players
playing *.mpeg movies addds to "wow" factor
reading/editing microsoft docs also is useful for non-techies
c ya
alvin
== yup taught at universities b4 ...
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