[pri.gnhlug@iadonisi.to: Dialup with RH72]

[jkinz at ultranet.com (jkinz at ultranet.com)]

At 08:54 AM 2/26/2002 -0500, Paul Iadonisi wrote:
...SNIP....
>  For a moment, pretend I am a newbie Linux user 
> I want to configure dialup internet access.
....SNIP...
>on.  I now get a stupid little window with nothing to click on and a right
>click just lets me do some more configuration (am I done *yet*?).  The
>'connect to ppp0' and 'disconnect to ppp0' are both greyed out.
>  So how the *&^^# to do I connect?

...SNIP...

> I know enough to type 'ifup ppp0' and tweak the ifcfg-ppp0
>file in /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts until it works right.  But why all
>these fancy gooies if they don't do what they're supposed to?
>  Am I really that clueless when it comes to navigating GUIs that I'm doomed
>to forever resort to the command line.  Not that that bothers me, really,
>I'm just trying to come up with a setup that's not scary for the computer
>newbie.
>  Or is what I think it is -- that Red Hat needs to do a lot more work to
>make this useable for the average non-techie user.  I know it's not their
>current focus, but they do seem to be putting a lot of work into the deskop,
>so why not get it right?
>  Any ideas?

Paul - I think your last idea - that a lot more work needs to be done is
the problem and it isn't limited to RedHat.  Ideally, (hah!), the system would
auto-configure itself into exactly what is needed after asking the user/installer
a few simple questions. 

Naturally this is not easy.

No there weren't any drugs except caffeine in my coffee this morning.  
This is just blue-sky thinking about what would be the most ideal 
behavior for Linux to achieve the widest possible acceptance and
that is directly related to ease of use, among other things.

How many questions, and what level of technicality would be appropriate
to ask a "newbie" ?

Do we need a diagnostic tree of questions designed to probe the user
and combine that information with the info derived from the hardware probes?

i.e - question "do you want this computer to connect to the internet?"
is combined with hardware probes that find an ethernet card and a modem
resulting in question "do you want to connect over the LAN or over a 
dial-up connection ?"  

And look at the assumptions inherent in the second question  -
Does the newbie know what a LAN is ? Or a dial-up ?

This gets messy fast....  But it is definitely worth attacking despite
the unbounded nature of the problem.

Look at how well the "configure" scripts determin what needs to be done
to build the same package on many systems.

This problem is more complex but a similar approach, packaged in a GUI
would, after much effort, solve much of the problem.  

The good news is there is no shortage of people who can test such an idea. :-)

--
Jeff Kinz, Emergent Research,  Hudson, MA. Email may contain words incorrectly
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