I just wrote a 3 page article for the linux newbie. I plan on releasing as many as possible with screenshots and easy to understand step-by-step content. I know what it's like to read how-to's that were gibberish, so I am contributing to the community this way. Please give it a read and expect alot more to come soon.

http://www.iceteks.com/articles.php?...cle=linux&p=1&

I think it looks good, but if I was a true noobie, and not a determined novice, so much text would scare the hell out of me. I'm not trying to be mean, but dang, that's alot to read if you're already afraid of change. Maybe trying a slightly larger font, with slightly more space in between each line would make it look better. I'm just looking at it from the phychological (sp?) view point.

Not bad, don't worry about being a bit wordy as long as you keep the use of tech. jargon to a bare minimum. You can always make it more concise in future revisions. One FYI, on page 3 you mention Mandrake being based on Redhat. This was true of early versions, but its no longer the case.

Quite nice, but I must disagree with you though, on your endorsment of Mandrake as the My-First-Linux(tm) distro of choice.

1) As a safe, hardware auto-detecting , non-threatening distro for a newb, I don't think you can go past Morphix...can be run completely from a CD, comes in Gnome 2.4, KDE 3.1, Game and LightGUI flavours (these are just the main ones out at the moment) and can be installed to your hard disk by clicking an icon on your desktop. As an added bonus, it's based on debian so get about the best, easiest, most reliable package management system there is.

2) I started with debian, and its really not that hard. The only real headache was the nvidia drivers, which is nvidia's fault not debs. I don't think a cute graphical installer makes things any easier, in the end it's pretty much the same thing.

Oh yeah, and theres no 'o' in Distribution.

Sorry, i think it's a pretty good article, there's seems to be plenty of articles along lines of 'HOWTO install Linux on your VCR remote', or building a webserver / firewall / router, but not all that much aimed at helping the newb come to terms with linux. I would even go so far as to say it's not wordy enough, you know, along the lines of 'what's this linux thing anyway?', 'what's it good for?' 'why would I want use it?',' where did it come from? and what with the penguin?'

Nice work

i'm just going to point out a few things:

Not everyone knows terms used, such as BSOD, PHP, Apache and such, this might make reading more confusing and/or scaring. I suggest something like "Word ( meaning)" or making a "see below for meaning" link

Mention that there are lots of mirrors for mainstream distros, some ISPs (like mine) have stupid international download restrictions, if the newbie assumes it's gotta be international dl, he might quit the ideia.

It might be worth to mention BIOS configuration to boot up cd-rom
and that they will not have to work (or rarely)on a console, using binary and hexadecimal , as that's probably what most people still think of linux, mention some of the coolest thing they can have, like quake3 native port running with good performance.
Some links at the end to sites such as ldp.org and LQ would be nice.

noticed you didn't explained the GNU/Linux stuff, but for a newbie tutorial, i think we don't need such technical issues.

It's a good work, hope you can improve it further and someday you can probably get a sticky topic with it on LQ

Also, watch out for spelling and grammar errors. It's not "alot," it's "a lot"

I fixed the spelling errors. I do not know what I was thinking, when I submitted it without running it through a spell check. I wrote the whole thing using kwrite, and I didn't bother.

But anyways. for you guys that say that it might be too wordy or I might be using words people might not understand is not the right way to look at this. Linux is not for everyone and only people who understand what I wrote will be the more knowledgable users to get themselves involved with linux. There is a reason that I didn't get too "techy" and didn't water it down. It was written in my eye, a newbie who can handle himself very well on almost any OS. I wouldn't try a new Os if I did not have a good background in Windows or Mac.
but I do thank you guys for reading it over and commenting.

The first thing to do is NOT get a distribution. The first thing to do is run a backup on your existing system; even if you plan on dual-booting and already have empty partitions; even if you want to burn all your Microsoft (or other vendor) bridges. This is true for any major operation.

If you have to ask how to do a backup, you are not ready to attempt an OS change yet.

Didn't I mention that the partitioning article was coming soon? I appreciate everyones responses' here, but you guys know linux and aren't

so calm down and take it from the perspective of what you first had when trying linux. Im not perfect, and Im not going to make my article fit your ways of doing things.

When it comes to Linux I'm a total newbie, having installed RH9 only two weeks ago. But you would be astonished by the number of "experienced" users who will attempted this (or other unrecoverable changes) without doing a backup.

I feel this is a warning that cannot be overrepeated. I get calls every day from someone who's done something and can't recover from it. But it's your document; obviously you should feel free to include or omit whatever you please.

It was all great but I didn't like
"Some are known for being a lot more stables (debian, Red Hat)"
and
"and hardware compatibility (Mandrake, Suse, Fedora, and Red hat)"

If I had never heard of Linux I would go out and get redhat (Which I am running, but not for much longer). What you said there is great but bracketed parts are not needed. People have to work out what is best for them not be told what is best for them.

Good point, which is why by this coming monday, I will have my partitioning article out as well.

I know I mentioned Red Hat 2x's but In my mind, it just falls into those categories. Besides, newbie or guru, you can't go wrong with red hat.

I don't know if it was just me or the time of day and the site was crowded but I couldn't open the link. I will try at a later date. I am interested in anything newbie. I am a determined newbie, who is becomming sick of M$ greed based polocies, but am having some expected trouble learning the "Linux language". I am getting a bit frustrated though, with the difficulty in setting up wirless internet with Linux. Used Mandrake9.2, Redhat 9, Fedore, and Knoppix. There is a lot of information on what to do, if you already know how to do it. I look forward to any step by step how to information with Linux.

Not to be too picky but there is at least one "O" in distributiOn.

hey man thanks. It's nice to see an actual newbie reply. I appreciate that. Actually the host's server crashed, and even the DNS isn't resolving, I do not know when it will be back up. On another note, the guy running the site submitted the spell checked and modified version to warp2search and slashdot.

But anyways, keep checking that site. I will have lots of step by step procedures and make it as general as possible. I also am down for suggestions on any topic ( I did say I was a newbie as well).

Thanks for reading.