Newbie friendly

[Emegra]

Another form of user friendliness that maybe should be considered is the how new users requesting help on the irq channels are treated particularly by the knowledgable ones the so called geeks

These people whether they're aware of it or not are advocates of this system and they are very often the first people new users turn to for help, Some of these new users go to the chat room just to watch the conversations and learn but mostly they are there for help, but whatever reasons they're there for they are not there to be made a fool of because they perhaps didn't describe their problem properly or broke some chatroom protocol they weren't aware of.

From what I've seen in the pcbsd help channel most of the "geeks" are friendly and helpful but one in particular is a condecending sarcastic know it all who seems to take great pleasure in belittling people just because they're not as smart as he is or thinks he is,

Now I understand this has nothing to do with the operating system, but PC-BSD can prove so difficult for new users that they will very often be driven to the help channel and believe me that particular individual can do a better job of driving people away from PC-BSD than any of it's inherant problems.

I understand that this post is a little off subject but it's still a form of user friendliness or unfriendliness as the case may be.

Graeme

[fluca1978]

I definitely think the PC-BSD forums should be on the FreeBSD website. When users need help with PC-BSD, the FreeBSD developers could also help out, especially when reporting bugs. Users only have to say that they are newbies and the FreeBSD people won't talk in technical jargon.

I don't think so. Also because the other products based on FreeBSD should be on such forum too, so it will generate a mess and a lot of traffic. It could sound harsh, but FreeBSD forums are for people using FreeBSD and that knows how to work with it. Moreover PCBSD has its development policy that is not supposed to be the same as the one behind FreeBSD. I don't see this "forum-merge" happening very soon....

[David30]

More on the "advocacy" subject for end-users - apologies for excess wording, but I want to help...

I have noticed that users like things to be as simple as possible and not have to "learn" anything. I don't know if PC-BSD wants to be the most popular operating system in terms of user numbers, but if it does, things have to be so simple that users have everything they need on screen. Consider that anyone can use a cashpoint "ATM" machine without even knowing what OS is running underneath - users don't care about the technical stuff like that. Users only care about what is on the screen and how to use what's on the screen. If there's any learning, configuration or technical stuff involved, then users won't like it.

The iPad, Android tablets and smartphones have given users a choice from just Microsoft Windows. How has this happened? Here's 2 possible reasons: 1) Users will only use the OS that is pre-installed on the device; 2) users find these devices easy enough to use everyday. Going back just 10 years ago, did you ever imagine Windows having competition?

Maybe PC-BSD could be pre-installed on laptops, netbooks, tablets etc and it could marketed as a reliable and secure "second" computer? As long as potential users don't have to read any technical details. These devices could be sold cheaper than devices running Windows, because PC-BSD is free. Every time a device is sold with Microsoft software, Bill Gates gets fatter and richer.

[Cobalt]

Maybe PC-BSD could be pre-installed on laptops, netbooks, tablets etc and it could marketed as a reliable and secure "second" computer? As long as potential users don't have to read any technical details. These devices could be sold cheaper than devices running Windows, because PC-BSD is free. Every time a device is sold with Microsoft software, Bill Gates gets fatter and richer.

I don't think Bill gets paid anymore, does he? He seemed pretty skinny the last time I checked, too.

Kidding aside, I'd love to see a PC-BSD-powered computer that could be purchased at a store or on-line. There was a computer that had a Linux distribution called gOS. Wal-Mart sold them, I think. gOS made the mistake of being obsessed with social networking, but it was pretty easy to use and it looked slick.

Computers sold in Wal-Mart were cheaper because they used all kinds of trial versions and adware to offset the cost of Windows. I'm not sure if this is still common practice.

[David30]

I *wish* there was something I could do to make PC-BSD available pre-installed and see everyone using it on desktop computers. It does feel frustrating not being able to do any "magic" things to make this become a reality.

I think Bill Gates is too rich and no amount of money can make his products rival the quality of PC-BSD.

Will the next update of PC-BSD (9.1) make the fonts look better? While not being jagged, they don't look as good as the fonts on Ubuntu. I've enabled the anti-aliasing correctly.

Negatives aside, I'm using PC-BSD now and loving it.