Why staying a "newbie" can really help

[Tigersharke]

I very often try to let newcomers (not the ones that get drunk from spoiled milk) know that they are in a unique position to see where documentation may have gaps or could otherwise be improved. Of course, those new visitors (the human non-reptile kind) to the PC-BSD experience are also well suited to usability issues and other suggestions for enhancements or capabilities.

[David30]

I'm more than happy to write a short PDF on how PC-BSD "feels" to newcomers and how PC-BSD can be enhanced. I'm not sure if the developers would feel like they are being 'told' what to - I would only be making suggestions.

The unique ability of seeing how newcomers install, configure and use PC-BSD would help make it stand-out and offer people an alternative to the mainstream OS's.

Without giving too many examples, I will give one example of an obstacle a newcomer will face: how to dual-boot PC-BSD with Windows.

PC-BSD does not install the GRUB bootloader, which makes it extremely hard for a newcomer to boot PC-BSD alongside Windows. Consider that Ubuntu automatically sets up dual-booting with Windows, knowing that users have no choice but to keep Windows installed for obvious reasons. Maybe PC-BSD could update an existing GRUB 1 or 2 bootloader when installing alongside a Linux distro and when the user installs PC-BSD alongside Windows AND a Linux distro e.g. Ubuntu - triple boot.