On Thu, May 19, 2016 at 07:36:57PM +0000, Stephanie Daugherty wrote:

[cut]

>
> On the subject of people that get thrown into the console for the first
> time when something breaks, there's a lot of room to improve here. What I'd
> like to see is something reasonably consistent with the curses installer
> that provides a limited degree of handholding. Rather than throw people
> into this automatically, it should be advertised in the default MOTD, and
> it should have fallback to a simple set of prompts in case someone's using
> a broken terminal. The audiences for this are both complete newcomers, who
> know absolutely nothing beyond what little the /etc/issue and /etc/motd are
> telling them, as well as the experienced sysadmin who finds themselves on a
> system where basic facilities like networking are down, and needs to
> restore those easily.

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>.....
> internet.
> - Easy access to appropriate new-user IRC channels.
> - A split screen environment, where documentation can be easily browsed on
> half the screen, and a terminal is available on the other half.

I don't think that "easy" ncurses tool are of any real use here. The
main reason is that if a user has used only a GUI in his/her life,
chances are high that he/she will feel anyway a deep disgust for
ncurses utils, even if it is just to save their distro from a
reinstall. I can't imagine a newbie lost in a console environment
being able to put himself on IRC swiftly using irssi.

It's not a matter of being elitarian, but let's face it: console
interfaces require a considerable additional effort that most users
are not willing to sustain anyway. Even if dealing with those
difficulties would save them from reinstalling.

Nowadays, most users would probably go for a reinstall at the first
issue anyway: Internet is cheap and fast, SSDs are much faster than
onl HDs, and installers are easy-peasy-eye-candy. After all, most
users use computers as they use tv, or washing machines, or
freezers. Why on Earth should I be able to recover my broken washing
machine?

HND

KatolaZ

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[ Enzo Nicosia aka KatolaZ --- GLUG Catania -- Freaknet Medialab ]
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