Suggestions for openSUSE-11.1 Newbie Installation stickie?

my point was that most new folks here assumes they are the typical new
guy and have typical needs...that is normal..

but in fact everyone arrives with very individual problems and needs,
i'm sure i agree with oldcpu that folding partition encryption into
the n00b stickie is not the next very important thing to include..

ymmv...i'm sure not trying to put you off..

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platinum

[oldcpu]

Originally Posted by traderbam

There are perfectly good reasons why anyone should want to encrypt their HD. This is not unusual and it is talked about quite commonly in the linux world, eg: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/En...ilesystemHowto

I am certain you are correct, ... there are many reasons.

There are also Novell / openSUSE manuals referenced in stickie, which describe encryption and many other features. One can always delve into those if one wishes to look up something like encryption. ... The stickie is intended to be far more basic. ... ie fundamental things like basic graphics, basic software installation, basic burning of the cd in the 1st place to be able to install.

Encryption does not fall into that category, but as noted, it can be found by digging into the links referenced in the stickie.

The stickie is NOT a beginners guide. It does reference such guides and also more advanced guides.

[oldcpu]

The main installation stickie (for 11.1) has been moved to: New User How To/FAQ (read only) - openSUSE Forums . A link was left in the previous location.

That is a new "read only" area with stickies and some limited guides for new users, and also for advanced users.

Hopefully this new area, in addition to hosting the Installation stickie, will address a number of requests of users, where these requests have been in place since the forum merged over a year ago. Some of our forum users wanted a dedicated "new users" section. Some were quite insistent in that request. But a number of our other users noted that could be open to abuse, where lazy users would simply post in the "New User" section, as opposed to putting the posts in an appropriate category (where by categorizing the help request, one has a SIGNIFICANTLY superior chance of attracting the needed help). Another concern raised was that an open to post "New User" section could be just the blind leading the blind, if the expert users did not visit that area. A number of those giving suggestions, had no idea that this is a volunteer forum, and mistakenly assumed that we who volunteer help on this forum were paid for our efforts (we are not) and assumed we would be forced to visit a New User area if it was open. But the volunteers who help are NOT forced to visit a new user area. There were MANY other points noted. In summary, there was a lot of disagreement on this subject of a forum change.

Hence the "compromise" that we have implemented for now, is to create at a fairly high level (in terms of forums structure) New User How-To / Faq (read-only) area. This will hopefully have a better chance of attracting the attention of new users, and by being read only it will hopefully address the concern raised by those who were against the "new user" subforum idea.

We still have a couple of more phases to this forum change to introduce, ... one being a notification that this area exists to all new users (with 10 posts or less) and another being a link to our forum in the appropriate openSUSE wiki.

[traderbam]

I think the best approach to understanding what newbies need is to be one.
I think the best approach to meeting newbies needs is to listen to what they ask for and give it to them.

Otherwise, most of the newbies will go to Ubuntu and openSuSE will mostly pick up the moderately experienced. I imagine the expert users will gravitate to fedora, with Linus.

> We still have a couple of more phases to this forum change to
> introduce, ... one being a notification that this area exists to all new
> users (with 10 posts or less) and another being a link to our forum in
> the appropriate openSUSE wiki.

i hope someday there will be mention of the special new users help in
Step 5 of the download page: http://software.opensuse.org/

such notice i would have added a long time ago, but i don't have
access to change that page, nor its used over and over template..

nor can i change the pre-release/beta download page at
http://software.opensuse.org/developer (openSUSE 11.2-Milestone7) nor
its template--both of which i believe should have a note in its Step 5
asking all forum questions, remarks, info and etc on Milestones to be
posted in the forum http://forums.opensuse.org/pre-release-beta/

--
platinum

[oldcpu]

Originally Posted by traderbam

I think the best approach to meeting newbies needs is to listen to what they ask for and give it to them.

Listen to what they say? Yes. Definitely YES !!

But often they don't understand what they are asking for.

When a newbie asks you how to remove root password checking so they can log on all the time as the administrator without having to type a password, do you give them the solution, if you know it ?

Ok, I concede I picked an extreme case, but more to the point is our forum is not ONLY for new users. Its also for the experienced users. If we modify our forum to suit only New Users who ask for things like "how to remove root password" and if we completely ignore our experienced users and tell them their experience input is NOT wanted because only new users have a say/priority, where will we be? Maybe we will only have the blind leading the blind?

Which is why IMHO a compromise approach (such as we have adopted for now) is the best approach. I think, baring a revolution, this current approach will be kept in place for a while (its the 3rd setup in the past week) to see how it pans out.

[oldcpu]

After discussion with one of our moderators, and following up on their idea, I think I will be dividing the openSUSE installation stickie into two parts. This will be to a large part to reduce the work involved, and also I think make the stickie better.

Stickie History:

First, some history: In the past (before the forum merge) on the old SLS forum I would post the sticky a couple of weeks before the GM release. Because it was posted BEFORE the release, it would be mostly generic to all openSUSE versions. I would add specific links in later via edits, or additional posts, and I would "tune" it to a specific openSUSE version as time went by. I also did the same with the 11.0 and 11.1 release on our new combined Forum.

Change summary:

This has me thinking for 11.2 I could divide the stickie into two, where if one looks at NEW Users - Suse-11.1 Pre-installation – PLEASE READ - openSUSE Forums there would be a general post/thread stickie, consisting of post #1, #2, #3, #4, #5, #6, #7, #12, #13

and a specific post/thread stickie, consisting of post#8, #9, #10, #11,

... ie (for those not wanting to follow the link):

Details:

New Users - openSUSE Pre-installation - PLEASE READ (Generic)

• post #1 in thread - general intro (we could put that link you wanted here)
• post #2 in thread - basic download/windows-defrag/burning/desktop-selection instructions
• post #3 in thread - how to check burned CD (if cannot perform media check - Note: I may move this to a separate how-to post and unstick it as I don't think most newbies are interested in following this up)
• post #4 in thread - extract from SuSE-GmbH ref doc on updating from old openSUSE to a new openSUSE (as to files to backup)
• post#5 in thread - repositories, multimedia links (include a link to caf4926's multimedia guide)
• post#6 in thread - many links for drivers, troubleshooting (NTFS, audio), concepts
• post#7 in thread - Novell generic support to openSUSE (links)
• post#12 in thread - link to guide to recover when openSUSE installed on external drive
• post#13 in thread - link to beginners wiki and how to participate in openSUSE

New Users - openSUSE-11.2 Installation - PLEASE READ (Specific info)

• post #6 in thread (extract) - link to openSUSE-11.2 release notes
• post#8 in thread - link to screen shots of openSUSE-11.2 specific walk thru for CD and DVD
• post #9 in thread - link to openSUSE-11.2 documentation by Novell/SuSE-GmbH
• post #10 in thread - setting up your multimedia with NO internet (link to doctorjohn2 and Easgs' packages, if they offer them for 11.2]
• post # 11 in thread - link to openSUSE-11.2 live CDs (ie selected extracts from Live CD - openSUSE )

... of course the post # would be different, but thats the general gist of it.

And of course both parts would hopefully grow and be improved as time goes by, with the benefit of the excellent suggestions of users on our forum.

By having this divided in two, it means each time there is a new openSUSE release, only the version specific stickie would need the major update. The other would be "unchanged" ... although again, both would be subjected to ongoing minor edits as suggestions were considered and adopted.