Barry Smith has begun a series of articles reviewing various GNU/Linux distributions with a focus on the non-guru, non-clueless-newbie audience.
For the majority of computer users, that’s really where they fall, I think. Most know how to use the specific applications they rely on, and they understand where to find files, how to navigate the filesystem, and the difference between saving and running an application.
I take my buddy Justin Timpane as an example. For a while, he seemed to aspire to be a computer geek, then decided that it wasn’t for him and he’d rather do something more real, and more important, than fix computers for a living. These days, he’s both a nurse and an actor — a tall order to fill — and seems to be thriving, enjoying both, although he’s a lot more tired all the time than I remember him 🙂
Anyway, Justin knows how to turn his computer on.
I kid you not, there are people behind a screen every day who do not know this.
There was one lady at my former work (a bank) who had not turned her machine off for several years while working there. She was also one of our “frequent callers” on the helpline because she was so absolutely clueless. This appeared to be a problem endemic to her brain, rather than limited to the technical arena, since people complained about similar problems with her outside of IT.
Anyway, the bank instituted a “save power, turn it off” program (that also had a beneficial secondary effect of helping the IT dep’t roll out patches better) who called the helpdesk in absolute panic the day after we implemented this policy because her machine “wouldn’t turn on”. I went down to see what was the matter.
I saw that her PC tower was turned around backwards under her desk. Cables had obviously been pulled out and put back. The keyboard and mouse were plugged into the wrong jacks (they look identical in shape if you use a PS/2 mouse & keyboard, but you’d think the color-coding mismatch would tip people off).
I fixed the keyboard and mouse mixup. I made sure the cables were secure. I flipped the computer right-way-front again.
I pressed the power switch on the front of the PC.
“So that’s how you do it,” I heard in a murmer from her lips behind me.
Back to what I was saying. Justin knows where the power switch is. He knows his music recording application, Cakewalk Sonar, very well, and even gives me tips from time to time on how to use it. He uses Instant Messaging, email, and most of the web goodies. He knows how to use the pointy end of a screwdriver, is pretty smart, and has reinstalled operating systems. He’s an intelligent, competent, mainstream PC user who knows how to solve problems in general, and can figure out most technical problems he encounters. This, I consider the “mainstream, average PC user”, representing the middle 50% of PC users.
This kind of article is geared for people like him, without aspirations to guru-hood, who use computers as part of their day-to-day life and might be looking for an alternative to Microsoft Windows.
This first installment in the series focusses on the easy-to-use Windows competitor, LindowsOS. I thought it was pretty cool, and will cover the next installment when it comes out.