[H-GEN] re the earlier discussion on assisting beginners/migrants

[Peter Robinson]

Russell Stuart wrote:
>> A beginners guide to Linux (including installation) might be worth 
>> running in  week 2 or 3 into semester - say the week of the 9th or 16th 
>> might be good.
>>
>> I use Ubuntu in my lectures and over the last couple of semesters I have 
>> been getting several queries from students who were thinking of 
>> installing a Linux distro. I would be happy to advertise such an event 
>> in the first week of lectures.
>>
>> This might be a good "hook" for advertising Humbug to interested first 
>> year students.
>>     
>
> Can you tell me what other topics, aside from installation, would
> be handy for the students?  One way or another I will try to make
> this happen.
>
>   
Hard to say - I have just pointed them in the "right direction" and let 
them at it. My course uses Python (and IDLE) and so is OS independent. 
In some (3rd year??) courses students are exposed to Unix.
I think it should be a "general intro".

Thoughts (in no particular order):

1. downloading packages - e.g. synaptic (and update manager)
2. su (root) discipline
3. using xterm and basic commands like cd, ls
4. man, info
5. use of some text editor - e.g. vi, emacs, gedit or whatever - emacs 
might be a bit hard and vi might be a bit strange for those used to MS 
editors. It seems lots of sites that provide fixes for things tend to 
use gedit to edit files.
6. gnome v KDE v ...
7. pointers to sites to help with problems - and being able to google - 
e.g. ubuntu ibex ATI
8. firefox, thunderbird
9. tar, zip (useful for student assignments)
10. document construction - ooffice, latex???
11. xorg.conf
12. compiz???

Peter