What is a newbie? (Was Re: Assistance for newbies?)

[jludwig]

On Thu, 2004-07-08 at 08:58, James Kosin wrote:
snip
> 	I fail on questions 2 & 4.  /usr/share/doc is difficult to browse
> unless you know exactly what you are looking for.  There is no
> cross-reference or grouping for similar applications.  For example, if
> you need help in setting up a news-server, there are at least 2 flavors
> to choose from innd (being one).  Then if you want help on setup of a
> news reader, were do you go....  I've heard pan, mozilla, etc. passed
> around, but no clear place if you didn't know that already.
> 	I still think Linux is very neat curiosity item.  I've setup a full
> blown server, setup a firewall (even though our company also has a
> hardware firewall installed), setup a news-server (only for our local
> users), setup samba file sharing, etc....  I still find it stimulating
> when major changes happen, like when named went to a chrooted area.  I'm
> glad someone helped me with that....  I couldn't believe I was changing
> all those files and nothing was changing.  And also when they finally
> decided to give up ipchains in favor of iptables.  This took a little
> getting use to and rebuilding some of the scripts that I used
> (downloaded from someone else's documents) to setup the firewall.  Even
> the latest thing I found out about port 445! that I wasn't aware of.
> Don't worry, samba is only setup to accept from our domain anyway; but,
> the logfiles were filling with xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx.log files with IPs that
> were not from our network.
> 
> So, I guess I'm still a newbie!
> James Kosin
snip

Right of the top (bat?? wicket?) the newbie has for the most part
already solved the issue of loading Linux>

One point is this, some problems are inherently intuitive and simple to
solve. Other problems may not be in the capability of the user to fix. 

Another is that many of us could be considered newbies in different
areas. For example, I have never set up a mail, ftp, or print server
and, in these, could be considered a newbie even though I have used
Linux for several years.

I would first always try use man pages and HowTo's, but, I am sure
somewhere I would hit a roadblock and need help.

-- 
jludwig <wralphie at comcast.net>