On to the suggestion:
Mint is awesome, It has built on everything previous OS's have introduced and improved them considerably, but every time I use Mint, I wonder "what if I was an ordinary windows user (hereafter I will call this a MicroNewb. this IS NOT a derogatory term. Everyone was one sometime.) and decided to switch to Mint? I wouldn't know a thing about what I was doing and would probably give up when I realized that my Internet was broken (or any other minor issue) and forever shun Linux as an incomplete system. I've been thinking, and I believe that I have come up with a solution: a MintAssistant overhaul.
My reasons?
- Easy to implement, feasible.
- Helpful.
- MintAssistant does practically nothing as it is.
- It gives people a "real" reason to choose Mint (not that there aren't any real reasons, but "a dedicated, interactive Assistant" is quite convincing marketing talk).
- Cool.
Now: What the heck am I talking about?
My concept for MintAssistant (hereafter known as MA) is a simple, dynamic help tool. On first boot, after booting into the desktop, it will give you a nice welcome screen and offer to give you a tour. It will also offer to not assist you, and will say that it can be re-enabled via MintDesktop, found in your MintMenu.
The tour will show you GNOME, Nautilus, basic apps (Firefox, Thunderbird, AmaroK/totem, OOo, MintTools, Compiz, GNOME CP, etc.), itself, and the Terminal, all in a nice full screen, semi-slideshow semi-video format. It will then give you a getting started screen (this will also appear if you decline the tour) with different tasks. It will ask you to check if everything works, and troubleshoot your drivers, later telling you where to download new ones. It will detect when certain programs are running, and give you a nice introduction/help file, ESPECIALLY FOR THE TERMINAL.
How to do this:
- Make the base code.
- MAKE SURE TO ALLOW THE EASY ADDING OF NEW HELP FILES (I'd recommend storing them in a protected text file(s)).
- The 1st step is to integrate already available resources (user manual, individual help files, stuff on the forums, stuff on other sites, etc.)
- Make an easy way for people to add info (maybe a wiki or a Digg style site module, where the Dev Team and Mods (appointing mods for this purpose recommended) can easily see the most popular/helpful help files and add them in to the next update.)
Please reply and suggest!
