New here and feeling a bit overwhelmed

[FossyBear]

I would like to say a quick hello and introduce myself,I am a 54 year old self taught local computer doctor.I am often asked by friends and family to "take a look" at all sorts of computer and computer realated objects in differing states of disrepair and I am expected to breath life into the said objects and make them whole again.I will say that I do enjoy fault finding and find great joy in pondering over an ancient fault ridden PC or laptop and find great joy in the eureka moment when the veil clears.I do suffer from arthritis and have done for some 20 years,even surviving an attempted hip replacement which left my right leg some 3 inches shorter than the other.I am unable to work,so I had to find some way to keep my sanity.I came by an old generic computer running dos and I was hooked,the only major drawback over the was years was always cost of hardware and software.This brings me to where I am today which is here and now,I have heard about this project for some time and I must say it is the most exciting and amazing project to surface for years.When I first heard about the $25 computer I did a double take after reading many articles written about this project I felt I had better learn more about it,so here I am amongst many more learned folks than myself and I must admit that I feel a bit like fish out of water.So in closing I hope to fit in somehow and learn more about what goes on around here.

Regards FossyBear

[xspamo]

Don't worry, there are plenty of us who feel like fish out of water. I think once we get hold of a Raspberry Pi there will be plenty of help available on the forum for us (lots of nice people on here I've noticed.). The reason I want a R-Pi is that I want my kids to have a go at programming and messing about on a computer, just like I did as a kid, the R-Pi fits the bill perfectly.

[scep]

FossyBear said:


so here I am amongst many more learned folks than myself and I must admit that I feel a bit like fish out of water.So in closing I hope to fit in somehow and learn more about what goes on around here.


Hi Fossy. Don't worry, it's a friendly place

There is a lot of tech stuff here at the moment that is gobbledegook to the average person because the first release of the RasPi is kind of aimed at this audience (though anyone is still welcome to buy one in the first batch). But don't let this put you off - as the Pi 'matures' and moves towards the education release this summer there will be lots more beginner's stuff going on.

In fact there are already tutorials etc going on here: see Liam Fraser's Linux stuff and Jaseman's Python tutorials for example. And here's a thread started by an "absolute beginner".

Good luck and have fun

[Gert van Loo]

I can imagine how you feel. Although I know a lot about HW I still am new to a lot of SW terms, packages, abbreviations, being throw around here.

What you see/read/hear is a big group of computer experts (some call them Geeks) being very enthusiastic about this project. And we need these guys because they are the ones which will make it easier in the long run to use the kit.

I expect that there will be a totally different set of posts when the education release comes out. So for now I would sit tight, learn as much as you can and ignore the parts you do not understand. (I do!).

[n3tw0rk5]

Welcome to the forum from one who regards himself as just making up numbers for the moment.

If you have a hunt about there's a lot of useful info on here, that doesnt require a brain transplant to put into practice and dont be afraid to shout up and ask questions, it helps the rest of us learn

[Andre_P]

Hi Fossy Bear,

My experience is somewhat more intimate with silicon (I'm a Chip Designer), and to a degree the world above that is and will be confusing to a degree.

However, within my personal and professional experience when you ask a Software guy ,or girl, a question the general response is very positive.

Sometimes you need to toss the response around in your head, to allow it to find a similar personal experience metaphor, however you can always pop back and say where it's arrived in your head and ask to confirm.

The next bit might be teaching you to suck eggs, I hereby apologise if this does .

Something you can do while you await your Raspberry PI board is this.

Consider how you make a cup of Tea or Coffee, what exactly do you do ?

If you think about it the what you have is a sequence of steps which can be broken down into smaller steps. Also there are decisions that are made that leap back to previous steps possibly before proceeding to the next new step.

For example, examine the kettle, is there enough water, if yes turn on, if not then put water into the kettle.

Examine Kettle:

Is there enough water ?

Yes : Turn on Kettle

move to wait for boil

No  : open lid

place under tap

turn on tap

Is there enough water from the tap in the kettle

Yes :Remove Kettle from tap

Turn on Kettle

move to wait for boil

No : Keep tap on

return to checking water level.

Wait for kettle to boil :

Has the kettle boiled ?

Yes : pour water into cup

No  : return to checking if the water has boiled.

So from a 'Control' point of view that is how software works, there are more complex 'Control' methods but it gives a first rough rule about breaking a problem down and basic 'If Then Else' types of control.

What will be interesting will be a new appreciation of 'Data'. You will be able to 'shape' data into different ways that will make it easier to extract 'Information' from it and then you will be able to form 'Knowledge' from the basic data.

In fact I think that is the deepest philosophical elements in programming, the conversion of Data into Information and then into Knowledge. Once you crack that everything else really just becomes different flavours of Tea.

Fundamentally, don't give up, try something different each time and always ask questions.

Good Luck

[Chris.Rowland]

The house is flooded because you didn't turn the tap off

Chris

[Andre_P]

Chris Rowland said:


The house is flooded because you didn't turn the tap off

Chris



Well as someone said 'That is a Hardware problem' .

But seriously it's a good point, it was a step that I forgot in a real world situation. It's something that @Fossybear will bear in mind

(Also I am slightly hung over )

[Lynbarn]

Chris Rowland said:


The house is flooded because you didn't turn the tap off

Chris



... and all I have is a cup of hot water. What happened to the tea or coffee?

- honestly, there are some pedants around!!

[Andre_P]

I was thinking of adding a point with regard to being gentle on the exact sequence, oh well, hopefully the OP will get the point.

[Burngate]

n3tw0rk5 said:

... there's a lot of useful info on here, that doesn't require a brain transplant ...

Thing to note: the brain transplant seems to work automatically. Or at least as time goes by you learn which bits of gobble-de-gook to ignore and which bits of google-de-bock you can google

[Jongoleur]

Chris Rowland said:


The house is flooded because you didn't turn the tap off

Chris



Well, its the first iteration, there's bound to be bugs. 

Fossy - there's a ragbag of people here, who are eager to explore the Raspberry Pi, there's lots of ideas floating about and everyone is itching to get hold of one.  Read the threads and join in, there are bound to be topics you know something about and can be one of the "learned ones".  We won't bite!

[Doogle]

I like Andre_P's data / information / knowledge relationship; it could be expressed thus:

Sum of Data (in context) = Information

Sum of Information (in context) = Knowledge

Sum of Knowledge + Experience = Wisdom = Data for someone else

BTW: The implementation of the 'make a cup of Tea' problem , using Microsoft's .NET Framework, might go something like:

Try

Result = System.Command.Partner.MakeTea(Milk = True, Sugar = True, Priority = Now)

Return Result

Catch Exception "On your Bike"

Return Null

[timgiles]

Fuzzy,

There are a few linux gurus here, who's posts make one feel a little worried the lesser mortals around might not be able to do more than buy an RPi as a table ornament. However, these same chaps and chapesses are a real nice bunch and are doing a huge amount of leg work for us.

In terms of adding a small screen and /or touch - I would have thought by the middle of march we will have a number of options and easy to follow instructions.

In terms of learning to program, there are a number of tutorials on Python for example on the internet already, but books are available as are video tutorials.

The educational release in Q3 with accessories and access to a lot of get you started teaching documentation will be sure to help out if the above seems too much

Hope that helps.

[EdwinJ85]

Fuzzy,

Computers are amazingly complex and confuse the heck out of most of us at times. Even the best programmers usually aren't the best interface designers and vice versa. A lot of the technical talk you read on here is highly specialised and as such a bit offputting.

The good news is: with time and effort, you can learn whatever you want to.

The bad news is: I can't tell you what you want to learn and there are sadly only so many hours in the day. I wish there were more, or less of them at work so I had more time to study, but oh well.

Think of it as learning a different langauge. Spanish seems hard to non spanish speakers, but millions of people speak it so it can't be impossible right? The same goes for computers/programming, at least at my (limited) level. You can't learn everything in a day, but each day you do learn more and more. Millions of people program the world over, so it cannot be impossible as hard as it seems and I agree, it does seem very hard.

I am a long way off where I want to be and share your feelings of apprehension but if I can pick things up and learn them, anybody can! People here are generally very helpful so just ask questions and try things out.

I'll answer what I can, but I think the real questions are best answered by the real boffins, of which I am not one sadly.

[jamesh]

I look at it like this. Desktop Linux has about the same learning curve nowadays as Windows.

Do you know Windows?

Then you can learn Linux.

That's what I did. I'm no Linux guru, I've just acquired knowledge as I have needed it. The internet has the answer to most of the questions I have every asked, because someone out there will already have asked it.

Simples.

[MrStipo]

JamesH said:


I look at it like this. Desktop Linux has about the same learning curve nowadays as Windows.

Do you know Windows?

Then you can learn Linux.

That's what I did. I'm no Linux guru, I've just acquired knowledge as I have needed it. The internet has the answer to most of the questions I have every asked, because someone out there will already have asked it.

Simples.


This isn't necessarily true... as an everyday computing device, sure, Linux is just as easy to use as Windows, but from a power-user perspective it's tougher to get into. In Windows most of your installations can be done through a GUI, with some kind of guided walk-through or wizard. Linux is getting better on this front but for in-depth things you still have to do a lot of command-line input, which is nerve-wrecking for users that aren't really sure what they're doing.

I think learning bash scripting is a great way to get into Linux. FossyBear, if you want to dive headfirst into linux you might want to think about downloading a virtual machine program like VirtualBox and any linux distro like ubuntu, and messing around, find a few tutorials on bash commands and the like. As a VM it's very unlikely you'll harm your native OS, even if you destroy the virtual OS.

[adlambert]

MrStipo said:





This isn't necessarily true... as an everyday computing device, sure, Linux is just as easy to use as Windows, but from a power-user perspective it's tougher to get into. In Windows most of your installations can be done through a GUI, with some kind of guided walk-through or wizard. Linux is getting better on this front but for in-depth things you still have to do a lot of command-line input, which is nerve-wrecking for users that aren't really sure what they're doing.


I agree, and if your installation starts moaning about dependencies, that makes matters even worse. Windows is easy to learn for most because its in the office and in the schools and in the home, near ubiquitous. If you don't know how to do something then you can turn to one of your peers and they will probably know. With linux, people often resort to google, and then they end up meeting command line confusion. I love linux, but there is a difference and I can't blindly ignore these things, that wouldn't be helpful.

[jamesh]

MrStipo said:


JamesH said:


I look at it like this. Desktop Linux has about the same learning curve nowadays as Windows.

Do you know Windows?

Then you can learn Linux.

That's what I did. I'm no Linux guru, I've just acquired knowledge as I have needed it. The internet has the answer to most of the questions I have every asked, because someone out there will already have asked it.

Simples.


This isn't necessarily true... as an everyday computing device, sure, Linux is just as easy to use as Windows, but from a power-user perspective it's tougher to get into. In Windows most of your installations can be done through a GUI, with some kind of guided walk-through or wizard. Linux is getting better on this front but for in-depth things you still have to do a lot of command-line input, which is nerve-wrecking for users that aren't really sure what they're doing.

I think learning bash scripting is a great way to get into Linux. FossyBear, if you want to dive headfirst into linux you might want to think about downloading a virtual machine program like VirtualBox and any linux distro like ubuntu, and messing around, find a few tutorials on bash commands and the like. As a VM it's very unlikely you'll harm your native OS, even if you destroy the virtual OS.


The times I've had to drop to command line for installation? Hmm. Well, I just installed scratch, and simply downloaded the deb file from the scratch site and clicked on the downloaded file in Chrome. Hey presto it installed. That's the hardest installation I've done in ages.

That said, the Pi is someone different, but its just a couple of command line commands for installation and you are there.

Very impressed with Scratch. Hope it runs well on the Raspi.

[spurious]

10 years ago it was trixy to get all the drivers correct in Linux.. today it works it out and sorts it for you 99.9% of the time.. Windows isn't as accommodating.

Have you tried installing Linux in this century?

[toxibunny]

I have. Drivers aren't so bad, but everything else is a total pain. God only knows what it was like a few years back... Pic related - it's how I feel about Linux at the mo...

[jamesh]

toxibunny said:


I have. Drivers aren't so bad, but everything else is a total pain. God only knows what it was like a few years back… Pic related – it's how I feel about Linux at the mo…


I just don't understand where you are seeing things as a total pain. Ubuntu, on my current desktop, has been a joy (I also like Unity!). No real problems anywhere. What is a total pain?

Conversely, Vista on my other half's PC (more powerful), has been pretty bad. Especially the wireless networking.

[Jaseman]

If you're willing to put the time in, you'll find it very rewarding.

You have to build up your knowledge piece by piece.

Try not to get flustered when you hit stumbling blocks.  Seek advice and do your research, and believe in yourself that you can find the answer.

You have to wonder sometimes: 'How does that guy know so much on the subject?'

It's because some of us have been doing this for decades.

You always get the occasional whiz kids too who seem to know everything and learn at an in-human pace.  Plus some arrogant big heads - that's just human nature.  Try not to be put off by those guys with their negative comments.

For the most part, you should find supportive friendly people here that will encourage you along the way.

[toxibunny]

JamesH said:


toxibunny said:


I have. Drivers aren't so bad, but everything else is a total pain. God only knows what it was like a few years back... Pic related - it's how I feel about Linux at the mo...

*pic removed*


I just don't understand where you are seeing things as a total pain. Ubuntu, on my current desktop, has been a joy (I also like Unity!). No real problems anywhere. What is a total pain?

Conversely, Vista on my other half's PC (more powerful), has been pretty bad. Especially the wireless networking.


Firstly, I agree about the wireless networking on windows. If it doesn't 'just work', then that's a PITA too.

For the past two weeks, I've been trying to get *some sort of* Linux working on my home PC. It's fairly old and battered, probably about 2004/2005ish mid-range PC type of thing. I've took out the CD-ROM, because who uses CDs nowadays, right? You just get everything off the net.

First, I tried installing Ubuntu, using WUBI. *Ridiculously* slow, both to install, and while in use. Took up far too much space on the HD. Fair enough - it's  brand-new and obviously needs a better PC.

Next, various flavours of live USB sticks, installed using unetbootin. 6-8 hour install time, during which the computer was unusable, followed by absolutely nothing apart from a USB stick which was unable to be read, or even reformatted without installing some obscure SD card recovery tool. Debian IRC channel couldn't help. WinGrub tutorials didn't help. Days of wasted time.

There are easily over 100 versions of distro and desktop environment combinations. It's actually not that easy to find relevant help.

Puppy linux worked, however. Apart from I'd have to compile Pygame myself. Someone posted recently that compiling things yourself is actually kindof awesome - like a Mac program being run on windows! I'm not impressed, personally - it's actually a Linux program being recompiled to run on Linux. Well done, Puppy Linux, you did well, but there must be a better way. At least it proved my USB stick wasn't broken.

I found another tool for creating bootable USB sticks. Brilliant. Runs in windows, doesn't take hours. Burned by using the latest Ubuntu, I decide not to run the latest release of whatever, this time. Fedora 13, with LXDE, as oft-mentioned on the Raspi forums. It's ready, and I reboot. I step out for a breather, and when I come back...

Blank, black screen. USB light is flashing, maybe it's doing something. I wait. YES! after a few minutes of biting my fingernails, it appears. A desktop, with a submarine or something. And a tiny pointer and a few tiny tiny icons in the corners of the screen. First things first - change the desktop resolution. Found it in a flash. Things are looking up! Now to install python - after googling how to do it (it's there in the menu, with the very 'obvious' and 'helpful' name of 'YUM! Extender"), I set a few things downloading.

Lockup. So locked up I can't even hit 'cancel' - well, no worries - there isn't a cancel button anyway. It's doing something though - In 20 minutes it moves from 25/125 packages installed, to 26/126 packages installed. I left it until it got to 129 before realising that the stick was formatted to FAT32 this time, and I could probably just yank the cable out without doing too much harm.

Next day I too things slowly, only installing one thing at a time - well, as little as I could anyway, due to dependencies. Python and Pygame were installed. So was IDLE IDE after another google to find out how. I'm ready for some programming. It's not in any menu - I have to open something, then type it in. I need a desktop shortcut.

THE INSTALLED PROGRAMS ARE HIDDEN 3 UNHELPFULLY-NAMED FOLDERS DEEP - I HAVE TO GOOGLE TO FIND OUT HOW TO MAKE A DESKTOP SHORTCUT FFS.

*Deep breath*. Okay, I'll deal with that later. I'll just install Pyside and do the shortcuts thing later.

*goes to YUM!, select Pyside, hit 'ok'*

LOCKUP.

...come to the raspberry pi forum and see people talking about how Linux is so awesome and friendly that even their grandpa doesn't even realise it's there. post http://gifsoup.com/webroot/ani.....3876_o.gif .

As always, YMMV.

[toxibunny]

Apologies for the rant - I"m feeling a bit overwhelmed too. Turns out I"ve also been brewing up a nice chest infection over the past couple of weeks...

Jaseman, your intentions are good, but unless the aim of the Raspi is to get kids to learn how to use Linux, then that"s a dangerous attitude - it should be as intuitive to use as possible, not the type of thing that you need to keep getting advice from wizards for for relatively basic things.

Not that I"m criticising the wizards and hackers who are doing the hard work of putting together a free, fully-featured alternative to Microsoft and apple - it"s a noble effort, with some impressive results. I"m excited to see what the Remix team have put together.

I"m just adding my counterpoint to the "nothing at all is wrong with Linux, young grasshopper - just spend a few weeks learning bash scripts and esoteric terminal commands and you will be enlightened" posts...