Sorry for the novel. I know I'm not really providing an answer for the document/book you are looking for but I thought I would share a recent experience I had.
As technical users I think that we tend to think to much about what we think a computer user needs to know. > Looking for an end user document/book that's distribution agnostic. > Focused > on basics, such as how to view a PDF file. Does the user really want to learn about a computer or applications? Computers for most people are just a tool to get work done and my opinion is that there should not be a big learning curve to do normal every day tasks. Earlier this year a friend of mine who works with insurance benefits for a major university had his laptop die the first night we were all out of town for a tennis tournament. He said he didn't like using a computer in the office centers of the hotels so I let him borrow mine since my wife also had hers that I could use for my work. I use Debian along with the Gnome desktop environment. He is a smart guy in what he does but is not even close to being a technical guy. > Based on the above, any modern user-friendliness distro this user is > likely > to use will most likely have all the apps for common file types. The only change I made to the account I made for him was to enable the Applications extension so that there would be an application menu. He had never used linux and I told him to give me a call if he had any problems. He never contacted me needing help. The morning at breakfast thanked me for lending him the computer and asked if he could keep it until Sunday. We had lunch with our friends before we all headed back home on Sunday and I asked him if he was able to get his work done with my laptop. He said that it sure looked different but that he found firefox and that along with the Writer application he found in the menu was really all he needed to get work done. He said at first he missed the task bar but that with Alt+Tab was able to get back to his programs and was a bit proud when he discovered that the Windows key would show all of the applications and allowed him to click on the one that he wanted. I asked if he found anything that would not work and he said he had no problems at all. He said that other than work he did some youtube stuff, browsed the web, and that he and found some nice games to relax with. > You can also install Linux distros that were specifically developed > for > people moving from MS WIN or Apple systems. If a user is really concerned about not having Windows installing these type of distributions might be a big help but from my experience owning a computer business people tend to complain a lot about computers not working like they expect them to. In linux there are more things to learn than any of us will ever have time to learn but not everybody is a linux person like we are. Not to start a distro/desktop environment war but I think that providing a nice modern desktop (gnome/kde) on a distribution that doesn't require you to look for new applications beyond something like the software apps in Debian/Ubuntu/Mint would be much better than setting up a distribution with your favorite window manager. If it doesn't work for them or they want more or want to learn more things you can always show them different things. I know you like Slackware and XFCE and I was a Slackware user for a long time but it can be a lot of work. I think XFCE is nice as well but I do not see it as a good environment for a complete novice. I have a few family members that I have set up with Debian stable who are very happy. I have used Debian for decades and have their systems get automatic updates because I've never really had any issues when following the stable branch. I hardly ever get support calls from them and when I do it is usually simple things that aren't really a problem. -- David _______________________________________________ PLUG mailing list PLUG@pdxlinux.org http://lists.pdxlinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug
