I’m talking about like your mom if she started using Linux, and just needs it to be able to open a web browser and check Facebook or her email or something. A student that just needs a laptop to do homework and take notes, or someone that just wants to play games on Steam and chat on discord.
I’m working on a Windows - > Linux guide targeting people like this and I want to make sure it can be understood by just about anybody. A problem that I’ve noticed is that most guides trying to do something like this seem to operate under the assumption that the viewer already knows what Linux is and has already made up their mind about switching, or that they’re already pretty computer savvy. This guide won’t be that, I’m writing a guide and keeping my parents in mind the whole time.
Because of this there’s some things I probably won’t talk about. Do these people really need to know that it’s actually GNU+Linux? No, I don’t think so. Should I explain how to install, use and configure hyprland, or compile a custom gaming kernel? I dont think that’s really necessary. You get what I’m saying? I don’t want to over complicate this and scare people off.
That being said I also want to make sure that I’m not over simplifying by skipping on key things they should know. So what are some key concepts or things that you think even the most basic of Linux users should understand? Bonus points if you can provide a solid entry level explanation of it too.
Contrary to what others write*: Yes, the terminal.
It’s not that you can’t get by without it on many distros, for most things. But for even for medium and non-techy users, getting the fear of the terminal out of the way early will make their journey much, much smoother. It doesn’t have to be much, no shell scripting or anything, just the basics, conceptually what a terminal is, what the shell is, how to execute stuff, maybe
chmod +xto execute, other utilities likels,cp,mv,mkdir. maybe symlinks/ln. That’ll be enough to take away the fear if they see any “Now do this in the terminal” advice online (which they absolutely will, let’s not delude ourselves), and maybe enough to get them to notice that “huh, sometimes the terminal is more convenient, they weren’t bullshitting when they said that”.*) Since you asked about “beginner Linux users” and not users that “just want to use their computer and not think about the OS at all”, I’m pretty confident about that assertion.
PS: I really think that’s not too much too ask. I remember my mother learning DOS commands back in the day for a regular desk-job. Everyone can do this, it’s not difficult, people just have to let go of a few false preconceptions drilled into them by the industry (MS, Google and Apple).
True, especially the part about your mom and others that had to use PCs in the 90s and 80s. I suck with a lot of CMD/PowerShell/Terminal stuff and get really in my head about whatever I am doing. Though a lot of it is due to things like switches and formatting order. Can be very very frustrating if there are a lot of them and having to constantly look at what they mean since they aren’t just regular words (which would obviously make the amount of typing get out of hand). The other main issue for me is dealing with moving or copying things around. GUI is much easier to get due to being able to see it in the same way I would move/copy things IRL. Especially frustrating if using USB drives, since they don’t just auto-mount/assign a letter if only using something without a DE. That part is (for me) a headache to have to deal with since the same OS will just do that if a DE is used. But also not something I do every day (or very often as I mostly use Linux when messing with my Pi).
But your core point of just doing it is very true. The reason that folks in offices in the 90s and 80s were able to get used to it was because they had to, and that there was a reason to at least know the things to do what they needed. They didn’t have to get bogged down with all of it (or even need most commands). So it would be best to focus on the things that are needed to get daily things done. Then it makes a lot of other bits easier to handle later on. And a lot of common things can be printed/written on cheat sheets or getting stickers with common commands to put on the side of the case or stuck to a desk in easily glanced at locations.