[clue-talk] I wish I'd known

[Angelo Bertolli]

skipworthy wrote:
> 
> fellow Nixians...A discussion I was having with someone else made me 
> curious...Although most people gravitate to Linux (GNU, BSD whatever) in 
> the course of already being competent in 'computer', many aren't 
> necessarily right away. I know I came to *nix from Windows, and had to 
> grok many many things that were different in order to be successful and 
> enjoy it both as a hobby and a prefession. So the question is : What do 
> you wish you knew or understood sooner when getting started with Linux ? 
> Or what, in your opinion should a 'newbie' know or understand?
> 

Man, it's been a long, long time.  The things I remember most about 
starting out with Linux is having to decide on how much swap space I 
needed, and understanding package dependencies.  Also, most of the 
packages don't have very good descriptions for people who don't already 
have some sense of what they are through experience.  I think the 
package descriptions need to be more explicit and not assume that anyone 
has any notion of what they're talking about.  Maybe this has gotten a 
little bit better... but when you first install a system there are 
thousands of packages to choose from (and growing all the time).  It 
would be nice if you knew which ones you needed, for what, and exactly 
what they did.

Angelo