Linked by Charles Williams on Mon 7th Apr 2003 03:17 UTC
We have all heard the horror stories of how GNU/Linux is difficult, if not almost impossible, as far as general desktop usability is concerned. In particular, there seems to be a continuous stream of gripes printed across the Internet, from Microsoft Windows users who wish, or have tried, to migrate to GNU/Linux, yet gave up in frustration. But what happens when complete computer newbies are introduced to GNU/Linux? By computer newbies, I am referring to those who have no computer experience whatsoever, in either a Windows, Mac, Linux, Unix or other environment.
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It is some time ago, about one and a half year, when I went to the University of Bochum in Germany for one week, as I know someone whose parent is professor mathematics, and they moved from the Netherlands to Bochum and at the new faculty, Linux needed to be installed. So we did that.
Now you know, this professor now got a new secretary. She had a computer which booted automatically in Windows 3.1, and she wrote her letters in Word. And she knew how to copy a file using the File Manager.
But now, this professor, wanted professional documents made in LaTex. In Pure Latex, not with Lyx or such. Just with an editor.
So this secretary needed to know you should login, start a konsole, type ls to list documents, type emacs this.tex to edit some file, use latex this.tex to compile it and use xdvi this.dvi to view the result. I was asked to explain it, though German is not my native language. However, if I remember it right, she understood everything in one hour or so.
So how difficult is the command line really?