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midfingr died 2 year ago he was my first real vanilla arch install. he did a lot of work with all distros many tutorials a plethora of subjects.
today i still use his arch iso install. installed it about the same time as mint 17.3 but didn't really use it much at first, now i use it everyday. not to say that i didn't run into troubles, arch has changed considerably in just 2 years.
What we need are some good Linux tutorial videos that are aimed at new people, and do not have the interest of watching mold grow on bread. HAKTips with Shannon Morse is good, but she moves to quickly and there is no associated website so you can see (and if need be copy) the commands she uses to practice them on your computer.
Joe Collins is interesting, and he would be a good one for that. The guy on DistroTube is pretty decent, but he is a bit monotone at times. The YouTube channel needs to be backed up with a website with the commands for practice. That would be great.
When I saw the title to the thread I immediately opened it to post about Joe Collins but the OP was already there.
Our cable company gives us access to YouTube so I can watch/listen to him even when I'm not at the computer.
I've found his videos to be thoughtful, useful and even when he (self-admittedly) rambles I learn something.
Gotbletu (https://www.youtube.com/user/gotbletu) gives a lot of interesting command line tools with good explanations on how to use them. Definitely not for everyone, but it's interesting to see a completely different workflow in Linux than the desktop environment and GUI applications.
The truth is that I don't know of any GNU+Linux-related videos which are good for total newbies.
This fact brings up an interesting (I think, anyhow) point: if we're going to sit here and talk about videos, we need to first talk about demographics.
Question 1:WHO is our target demographic?
It sounds to me from the general discussion up-thread one of the assumptions here is we need something that is an outreach advocacy for the ecosystem. That means a good video cannot start out having made too many hasty generalizations about who the audience is, nor can there be too many assumptions made about the knowledge level of the audience nor of the motivation behind their having considered running one of the many distros.
Question 2: How does one overcome the avalanche which is an inherent part of freedom of choice?
Obviously, there are some who would watch a video having some idea about distros. However, if the goal is to try and broaden the userbase, one of GNU+Linux's greatest strengths is, paradoxically, one of its greatest drawbacks. The other thing is there's a lot of propaganda and ideology and frankly piss-poor immature attitudes out there. An example of this is a video which talks about distros in terms of being "entry level" or "good for n00bs", etc. People with that mindset are, in my opinion, unwelcome. Distros exist because the inherent freedom emanating from the GPL lets us have the freedom to shape the ecosystem in our own image, from desktop environment to package management to toaster <-> unstable spectrum, and a hundred more. To say distros are oriented at new users or power users completely misrepresents the very point.
At the same time, such plurality has no comparison in the world of technology. It only has a parallel in the manifest world of the physical. For example, if you're looking to buy a coffee pot, how many possible options does one have? A hundred? A thousand? Yet nobody is put off on buying a coffee pot because there's very extremely many more than one option. Same thing with cars, with clothes washers, watches, cell phones, and the list goes on and on. The biggest difference is a person being presented with 57 different options for a toaster is not caught off guard by this reality as they would be a choice of operating system.
Question 3: Who's goods are you trying to sell?
I'll start this one out with a quote I often find relevant: “Your focus determines your reality.” — Qui Gon Jinn
We here are LinuxMint users. Yes, many of us have used other distros. Many of us may use more than one distro right now. But on this forum, the thing which unites us all is this distro. If we're going to have a good video, we need it to be one in which a specific distro is pitched, and since it's us here talking about this, that distro should logically be LM.
LM has a number of benefits. Its primary DE is one which both Mac OS X and Windows users will find familiar. Trust me: Software availability and era notwithstanding for the moment, I could take a Mac user of any era, put them in front of Cinnamon, and in very short order they would find it extremely similar to what they are already familiar with. I don't know any other desktop environment which does this one thing alone better.
Beyond questions (and in posting this I hope you folks raise others as my list is not intended to be exhaustive) there are some very practical realities to be faced. The first one which always hits people is viability relative to their needs. It's not so much "How do I copy files from my hard drive to my flash drive" but a whole lot more of "How do I run the software I need and/or want?" That is a big hurdle. If you have to give five to ten minutes' explanation to a person on how they can go about getting their software which works perfectly well right now if they don't change platforms to work if they do change platforms, you've already lost their attention and interest. I think many of us posting in this thread are sufficiently tech savvy to differentiate between proprietary software that's eminently replaceable (Internet Explorer and/or Edge vs. Chrome or Firefox) and stuff that's not (Peachtree, Logic Pro, After Effects, etc.)
Honestly, I don't think GNU+Linux is suitable for all possible use cases. Yet how do we help users of Mac OS X and Windows self-filter so those who could move right over recognize this?
Flying this flag in support of freedom 🇺🇦
Recommended keyboard layout: English (intl., with AltGR dead keys)
She does get hard to understand at times, she goes to fast and assumes a level of knowledge that many of us do not have. It would be nice if they had a website where she could post her examples for us to read later.
I am basically mainlining Joe Collins videos. I have them going on my Roku while I follow along on the computer(s).
LAPTOP: HP - Linux Mint 21.3 Cinnamon via SSD with Windows 11 on hardware DESKTOP: Lenovo ThinkCentre M83 SFF- Linux Mint 19.3 Cinnamon (on hold for now)
Inundated wrote: ⤴Mon Nov 12, 2018 12:33 am
I am basically mainlining Joe Collins videos. I have them going on my Roku while I follow along on the computer(s).
Me too. I learned a great deal from Joe, and have him set as subscribed.
he was my first real vanilla arch install. he did a lot of work with all distros many tutorials a plethora of subjects.
