DSL Ideas and Suggestions :: Help Beginners Help Themselves



Working with Bash IS a lot more complicated than with DOS...there's no avoiding that.  One of the great advantages of a Linux system is that it is modular....from a shell script you can run and pipe practically any program.  This means that someone who writes a script needs to know at least the basics of many commands.  What it doesn't mean is that the end-user has to know these commands, but it wouldn't hurt.  The same commands found in scripts can be run from console or menu item, and modified to suit the user's needs.  

The Linux environment practically begs the user to put in some time to learn about what is happening under the hood.  I know I've said this before, but it's my belief that if a person doesn't want to be bothered to learn a LOT, they are probably not ready to use Linux for anything more than simple tasks, or those which can be performed with a big bloaty graphics interface such as what you'd find in Windows.   If the person knows they have to study a bit, that's a good start.  At this point they could be guided in the direction of documents and tutorials which will help them on their way.  

However, most people who develop software don't have the time or the desire to document everything for everyone...there has to be some level of assumption.  If you spend the time and effort it takes to make things as easy as possible for the largest number of people then you sacrifice that time which could be spent on making a better application.  In order to create such explicit documentation, I think the task needs to be taken on by someone other than the software developer....someone who knows the application, but also has the time to build easy-to-follow documentation.  Since there aren't many people like that, we have something else which seems to work fairly well:  There are bigillions of online forums which are created with the sole purpose of sharing Linux knowledge and helping others.

This brings me back to the original subject....yes it would be helpful to give noobs a nudge toward searching rather than asking the same questions over and over.
I think the documentation project is important. If this is done well and weak/unclear areas continuously improved, newbies will find things easier. Suggestions from newbies about the documentation should be taken into some consideration.

Using a real example to try out is the way to teach, not vague things which will give rise to more questions.

Many newbiew will do well to say how they did it when they succeed. This maybe better understood by other newbies.

I have learnt a lot from the docs and the forum, but one area still eludes me. How to save the settings to the live CD itself.

RobertS says that if we edit the filetool.lst and do a backup, then rename the backup.tar.gz as myconf.tar.gz and then write it into the boot sector of a DSL CD, it should restore when we start the CD.

I tried to get my list of bookmarks to work.

I replaced the /home/dsl/.mozilla/firefox/bookmarks.html with my own bookmarks.html file, then edited the filetool.lst by adding the /home/dsl/.mozilla/firefox/bookmarks.html  line and saved it.
Then I did a backup and renamed the backup.tar.gz file as myconf.tar.gz and wrote it to the root partition of my DSL CD.

When I rebooted I still get the default bookmarks.html file. Where have I gone wrong?

If I succeed in doing this I will be happy to document this :-)
Hello Softgun:

Perhaps I am misunderstanding your question. Easy to believe as I am a newb for sure. However, for what it is worth, this is what I have done to save my configuration on a liveCD.

1. Save via filetoolist my configuration (including bookmarks, etc.) to a hdd partition.  Thus there is a backup.tar.gz file out there.

2. When I have it the way I want it. I begin the DSL remaster process.

3. I simply copy my current backup.tar.gz file to the newcd directory. No renaming or anything.

4. The new remastered CD has my entire configuration, including bookmarks.

I have some concerns about conflicts between the onCD configuration and what the DSL may find on boot on the hdd partition (usually I have changed things). I know it works, but off the top of my head, I can't remember which takes precedence.

Hope this is relevant to your question.

I have some thoughts on documentation, but for a later post.


Greg
Hello Greg,

Thanks for caring to reply. I have still not sorted this out!

When you mean remaster you do not mean creating empty partitions, large swap partitions, rip-CD etc now do you?

I like dsl because we can do things without all this.

Is there two differebt versions of the filetool.lst file? Am i writing to the wrong one?

If the backup.tar.gz works, all you have to do is, rename it myconf.tar.gz and paste it into the / parttition!

My problem is my backup fails to grab my bookmarks new file....

I am obviously doing something wrong, but what exactly is the question.

:-(
I think all it'd take to avoid 90% of newbies questions (as many i ask myself) and newbies frustrations is a simple .pdf or .txt getting started guide with examples for any step needed to reach a basic functionality with DSL and linux in general.
the learning curve at the beginning is simply too steep to be able to use the forum properly cos the new terminology to be absorbed is too large.
redhat guides are a good example, where I think Debian pages tell you a bit too much and lack of examples.
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