Magazine Article Ideas

[NiklasAx]

As a new user to linux and PCLinuxOS I'd suggest something like a newbie edition for people wanting to migrate from windows. I have tested a bunch of different distros the last couple of weeks and, I hope, finally found what I was looking for in PCLOS. But, it would make things a lot easier if there were somewhere you could go to find more basic guides that fit your specific needs. This might fit more in a specific forum topic or site section. I'm involved in running a small browserbased game and know how important it is with easy accessible help. I know this isn't an commercial site, but I bet a collection of more newbie friendly articles would be very helpfull.

I have a few idéas myself and most of that is already available around the site in already published articles or in forum posts. Some things that I as a experienced windows user that uses his PC mostly for music, watching movies and series, chatting and surfing would appreciate myself would for instance be.

1. Setting up a working sound environment with HDMI. Let's face it, HDMI is coming more and more and in general it's a pest to get working in linux. That alone was one of two things that made me keep looking for other distros after having tried most of the popular ones. The other things was the difficulties to get my monitor and TV set up correctly, side by side and not over and under which for some reason was the only way that would be accepted by other distros, no matter what drivers I used. That and getting the primary display setting to actually stick after a reboot or shutdown.

This took care of my sound problems: http://pclosmag.com/html/Issues/201209/page08.html

This fixed the primary display  issue: http://divby0.blogspot.se/2011/11/howto-make-kde-remember-dual-monitor.html

The "extended desktop" problem was actually fixed by ATI CC in PCLOS, no idea what's done different here compared to for example ubuntu. It's probably set up better since it's included in the distro from start.

Some other things I've had problems with is finding players for my music and movies/series. Audacious seems to be the best for handling large collections of music, 1300 hours of music mostly in high quality flac files, other players would simply crash trying to add all the files to the library. VLC for some reason have a sync problem between picture and sound, so I'm using XBMC even though I have to run it in window mode because of problems getting it to recognizing my monitor setup.

Having PCLOS auto mount hard drives is also something I think most people "need", I think I found a topic in the forum that helped in that regard.

Setting up xchat is also something that's been a challenge, much less so though than some of the other stuff. It's mostly been about having it auto authing on startup/connection.

Even if my problems are related to very specific areas some of them are things that I think new users "expect" to, if not as easy as in windows, at least having easy accessible guides to be able to set it up properly. The most computer savvy individualls are the younger generation, and even if many of them are proned to playing games, many also have HTPC's and use PC's as a media center and could as easily, with some help, use PCLOS for that. And with steam going for the linux market I'm guessing more people might want to give linux a try in regards to playing games as well.

I know there are guides or HOWTO's for most things but it takes a lot of time to actually find any usefull information if all you want is to set up your PC to work more or less like windows. Linux is on one hand extremely customizable, much more so than windows, but sometimes there is such a thing as "too much options".

And this leads me to something that I've found very usefull in windows to make reinstalling the OS simpler and that's knowing where files are stored. In windows it's usually in program files/program files (x86) and appdata which makes it very easy to save any setups you have for your programs. I saw someone mentioning something similar earlier in this topic. Knowing which files to save would also be usefull so you simply could install the programs you usually use and then just replace the necessary files with your old saved ones to get your specific settings back even on a newly installed system.

I've already tried this and it didn't really work.

http://pclosmag.com/html/Issues/201209/page09.html

And that doesn't really save specific setting anyway I guess?

Granted, I only tried it to revert changes made to the same system, not on a completely new system.

Time to stop ranting now I think. 

[Xenaflux]

Time to stop ranting now I think.

Welcome here.
No, it's not really a rant. It's what a lot of people say/think when they first come to linux.

Just a few pointers, in case you haven't discovered them

--you have found our magazine already
--Next is     http://www.linuxlinks.com/
   from there you can explore more
--Full circle magazine : Similar to ours, just other distro orientated, but what goes there, goes here for most part
  http://fullcirclemagazine.org

Have fun here around

[Just17]

NiklasAx, welcome to the forum! 

Would you have the time to collate what you found to be useful to you and maybe provide it for the Wiki entries and/or a mag article?

I am sure it would be appreciated

Yes, the difficulty most users have is finding things in the first place ......  most often because the terms needed to do the searching are not familiar to them, and so searches often fail to find the info that is there.

What You suggest might help to overcome that problem

[The Chief]

As a new user to linux and PCLinuxOS I'd suggest something like a newbie edition for people wanting to migrate from windows.

Have you  read this?

http://linux.oneandoneis2.org/LNW.htm

[Xenaflux]

Have you  read this?

http://linux.oneandoneis2.org/LNW.htm

Well, I had already !
And if I was a newbie, I probably would run back to windows, seeing that document .
 

[NiklasAx]

Thanks for the positive response.

Hadn't seen the other magazine but will check it out. Hadn't seen that looong document either but as Xenaflux said, even though it was in good humor, his point is valid I think.

I guess it's more about collecting the things that the majority of new users conceive as being hard to get the most common things up and running. Most guides are probably built up that way just that they usually consist of, say 200 different articles with long texts and no screens instead of the opposite which is what todays youth are looking for. I think the lenght of the text is crucial if you want people to keep reading. And screens will help them decide early on if this is something they really need or if they can go on to the next search hit. I can try and gather the things I found helpfull and see if I can make it as short as possible.

One tip though, if it's possible for the creators of PCLinuxOS to do so, is to make auto mounting of HDD's easier, maybe via a simple guide once the OS have found new drives or partitions. HDD's are so cheap nowadays so it's probably the standard to have at least 2 drives in any give PC. One for the OS and one for storage. And even if I managed to fix it with a guide I found, it was more old school linux rather than the ease they have managed the OS handle ATI cards, which is as I've come to understand, not very common in other distributions. And that makes me believe they can do more of the same in other areas as well.

But as always it's a matter of priorities and even more so of available coding time.

[parnote]

NiklasAx,

I have to say that I really like your idea. My mind is racing at the moment on how this can be accomplished. One potential obstacle that keeps rearing its ugly head is how to anticipate all the initial problems users might have when migrating from Windows to Linux. Let's say you have 4 users. One user has ATI video, user #2 has nVidia video, user #3 has Intel video, and user #4 has Via video. The solutions for video problems for all four video chipsets is varied, and they vary even more depending on the various models available for each of those video chipsets, individually.

It has been quite a few years since I've migrated from Windows (WinXP) and I have to admit that I might have forgotten much of what I did when I made that move to Linux. And, when you get to talking about Vista and Win7 -- and soon to include Win8 -- I can't provide a lot of advice, since I never used those versions of Windows.

I am certainly willing to explore this idea, but many more of the details related to the scope of such an endeavor would have to be discussed in much more detail. If you have additional ideas about this, please feel free to share them with us.

Also, you seem to express yourself quite nicely. Have you thought about writing articles for The PCLinuxOS Magazine? We could certainly use some help, if you're willing. At the very least, you could help with at least the Windows Migration articles.

Paul Arnote [parnote]
PCLinuxOS Magazine Chief Editor

[YouCanToo]

As a new user to linux and PCLinuxOS I'd suggest something like a newbie edition for people wanting to migrate from windows. I have tested a bunch of different distros the last couple of weeks and, I hope, finally found what I was looking for in PCLOS. But, it would make things a lot easier if there were somewhere you could go to find more basic guides that fit your specific needs. This might fit more in a specific forum topic or site section. I'm involved in running a small browserbased game and know how important it is with easy accessible help. I know this isn't an commercial site, but I bet a collection of more newbie friendly articles would be very helpfull.

I have a few idéas myself and most of that is already available around the site in already published articles or in forum posts. Some things that I as a experienced windows user that uses his PC mostly for music, watching movies and series, chatting and surfing would appreciate myself would for instance be.

1. Setting up a working sound environment with HDMI. Let's face it, HDMI is coming more and more and in general it's a pest to get working in linux. That alone was one of two things that made me keep looking for other distros after having tried most of the popular ones. The other things was the difficulties to get my monitor and TV set up correctly, side by side and not over and under which for some reason was the only way that would be accepted by other distros, no matter what drivers I used. That and getting the primary display setting to actually stick after a reboot or shutdown.

This took care of my sound problems: http://pclosmag.com/html/Issues/201209/page08.html

This fixed the primary display  issue: http://divby0.blogspot.se/2011/11/howto-make-kde-remember-dual-monitor.html

The "extended desktop" problem was actually fixed by ATI CC in PCLOS, no idea what's done different here compared to for example another distro. It's probably set up better since it's included in the distro from start.

Some other things I've had problems with is finding players for my music and movies/series. Audacious seems to be the best for handling large collections of music, 1300 hours of music mostly in high quality flac files, other players would simply crash trying to add all the files to the library. VLC for some reason have a sync problem between picture and sound, so I'm using XBMC even though I have to run it in window mode because of problems getting it to recognizing my monitor setup.

Having PCLOS auto mount hard drives is also something I think most people "need", I think I found a topic in the forum that helped in that regard.

Setting up xchat is also something that's been a challenge, much less so though than some of the other stuff. It's mostly been about having it auto authoring on startup/connection.

Even if my problems are related to very specific areas some of them are things that I think new users "expect" to, if not as easy as in windows, at least having easy accessible guides to be able to set it up properly. The most computer savvy individuals are the younger generation, and even if many of them are proned to playing games, many also have HTPC's and use PC's as a media center and could as easily, with some help, use PCLOS for that. And with steam going for the Linux market I'm guessing more people might want to give Linux a try in regards to playing games as well.

I know there are guides or HOWTO's for most things but it takes a lot of time to actually find any useful information if all you want is to set up your PC to work more or less like windows.

This begs the question, If you want it to work more like Windows, why no just use Windows?

Linux is on one hand extremely customizable, much more so than windows, but sometimes there is such a thing as "too much options".

The only folks that tend to think there are to many options, are the one that have had their options limited.

And this leads me to something that I've found very useful in windows to make reinstalling the OS simpler and that's knowing where files are stored. In windows it's usually in program files/program files (x86) and appdata which makes it very easy to save any setups you have for your programs. I saw someone mentioning something similar earlier in this topic. Knowing which files to save would also be useful so you simply could install the programs you usually use and then just replace the necessary files with your old saved ones to get your specific settings back even on a newly installed system.

I've already tried this and it didn't really work.

http://pclosmag.com/html/Issues/201209/page09.html

And that doesn't really save specific setting anyway I guess?

No it doesn't. mainly it will make your new setup the same as the old as far as the programs that are installed. There is no way that synaptic know what your personal configurations for those files are. You would need to copy your personal configuration from the old to the new system. They are normally found in the users home directory.   Perhaps rsync or remasterme would be a better program to use for your needs.

Granted, I only tried it to revert changes made to the same system, not on a completely new system.

Time to stop ranting now I think. 

[YouCanToo]

Have you  read this?

http://linux.oneandoneis2.org/LNW.htm

Well, I had already !
And if I was a newbie, I probably would run back to windows, seeing that document .
 

It seems that some can not handle those facts! Yet they want it to be so much like what they have been using since day one. When I first started using Windows, it was way different than what I had been using at the time CP/M.  Did I want or expect Windows to be "like" CP/M .......... NO

[Xenaflux]

It seems that some can not handle those facts!

I think replacing the word <some > with <most> will be more accurate.

Yet they want it to be so much like what they have been using since day one.

I think that is a natural reaction which has little to do with computers.
I have moved house a few times, and every time I arranged ( initially ) all just like it was in the old one.
Comfortable comes to mind

Did I want or expect Windows to be "like" CP/M .......... NO

I agree with that, but "we " are a small percentage of the total.
8 out of 10 times, I get those hints that "" it's not the same ""

I suppose you have heard already...... ""I want something different.Can you make it look the same? Thank you so much !""

[Bald Brick]

It seems that some can not handle those facts!

I think replacing the word <some > with <most> will be more accurate.

Yet they want it to be so much like what they have been using since day one.

I think that is a natural reaction which has little to do with computers.
I have moved house a few times, and every time I arranged ( initially ) all just like it was in the old one.
Comfortable comes to mind

That disorder is called cainotophobia. We all suffer from it to some degree, although fortunately natural inqusitiveness can help a few of us overcome it.

Did I want or expect Windows to be "like" CP/M .......... NO

I agree with that, but "we " are a small percentage of the total.
8 out of 10 times, I get those hints that "" it's not the same ""

I suppose you have heard already...... ""I want something different.Can you make it look the same? Thank you so much !""

Good point. But I take it your answer would be: "Yes, I can if you pay me enough". Your point being that if they want it to look the same and work the same, they should really stick with what they have.

[agmg]

As a new user to linux and PCLinuxOS I'd suggest something like a newbie edition for people wanting to migrate from windows. I have tested a bunch of different distros the last couple of weeks and, I hope, finally found what I was looking for in PCLOS. But, it would make things a lot easier if there were somewhere you could go to find more basic guides that fit your specific needs. This might fit more in a specific forum topic or site section. I'm involved in running a small browserbased game and know how important it is with easy accessible help. I know this isn't an commercial site, but I bet a collection of more newbie friendly articles would be very helpfull.

I have a few idéas myself and most of that is already available around the site in already published articles or in forum posts. Some things that I as a experienced windows user that uses his PC mostly for music, watching movies and series, chatting and surfing would appreciate myself would for instance be.

1. Setting up a working sound environment with HDMI. Let's face it, HDMI is coming more and more and in general it's a pest to get working in linux. That alone was one of two things that made me keep looking for other distros after having tried most of the popular ones. The other things was the difficulties to get my monitor and TV set up correctly, side by side and not over and under which for some reason was the only way that would be accepted by other distros, no matter what drivers I used. That and getting the primary display setting to actually stick after a reboot or shutdown.

This took care of my sound problems: http://pclosmag.com/html/Issues/201209/page08.html

This fixed the primary display  issue: http://divby0.blogspot.se/2011/11/howto-make-kde-remember-dual-monitor.html

The "extended desktop" problem was actually fixed by ATI CC in PCLOS, no idea what's done different here compared to for example another distro. It's probably set up better since it's included in the distro from start.

Some other things I've had problems with is finding players for my music and movies/series. Audacious seems to be the best for handling large collections of music, 1300 hours of music mostly in high quality flac files, other players would simply crash trying to add all the files to the library. VLC for some reason have a sync problem between picture and sound, so I'm using XBMC even though I have to run it in window mode because of problems getting it to recognizing my monitor setup.

Having PCLOS auto mount hard drives is also something I think most people "need", I think I found a topic in the forum that helped in that regard.

Setting up xchat is also something that's been a challenge, much less so though than some of the other stuff. It's mostly been about having it auto authing on startup/connection.

Even if my problems are related to very specific areas some of them are things that I think new users "expect" to, if not as easy as in windows, at least having easy accessible guides to be able to set it up properly. The most computer savvy individualls are the younger generation, and even if many of them are proned to playing games, many also have HTPC's and use PC's as a media center and could as easily, with some help, use PCLOS for that. And with steam going for the linux market I'm guessing more people might want to give linux a try in regards to playing games as well.

I know there are guides or HOWTO's for most things but it takes a lot of time to actually find any usefull information if all you want is to set up your PC to work more or less like windows. Linux is on one hand extremely customizable, much more so than windows, but sometimes there is such a thing as "too much options".

And this leads me to something that I've found very usefull in windows to make reinstalling the OS simpler and that's knowing where files are stored. In windows it's usually in program files/program files (x86) and appdata which makes it very easy to save any setups you have for your programs. I saw someone mentioning something similar earlier in this topic. Knowing which files to save would also be usefull so you simply could install the programs you usually use and then just replace the necessary files with your old saved ones to get your specific settings back even on a newly installed system.

I've already tried this and it didn't really work.

http://pclosmag.com/html/Issues/201209/page09.html

And that doesn't really save specific setting anyway I guess?

Granted, I only tried it to revert changes made to the same system, not on a completely new system.

Time to stop ranting now I think. 

I find your idea very interesting and I would be more than glad to help with this project.

It could be like a "Migrating from Windows" series of articles, starting from the basic stuff and slowly going to more advanced tips and tricks.
Of course this will be written specifically for PCLinuxOS but we could use recourses from other distros too.

For starters, we could have a list of alternative programs. It is one thing that troubled me also when I migrated from Windows. A new user has trouble finding its way through programs with strange names that he has never heard before. That list would surely be very useful.

A general description of how things work in Linux would also be very helpful. Repositories, updates, installing and uninstalling programs.

These are some random ideas. If you would like to take this project one step forward I'm here to help. We could create a new thread for further discussion.

[Meemaw]

As a new user to linux and PCLinuxOS I'd suggest something like a newbie edition for people wanting to migrate from windows. I have tested a bunch of different distros the last couple of weeks and, I hope, finally found what I was looking for in PCLOS. But, it would make things a lot easier if there were somewhere you could go to find more basic guides that fit your specific needs. This might fit more in a specific forum topic or site section. I'm involved in running a small browserbased game and know how important it is with easy accessible help. I know this isn't an commercial site, but I bet a collection of more newbie friendly articles would be very helpfull.

I have a few idéas myself and most of that is already available around the site in already published articles or in forum posts. Some things that I as a experienced windows user that uses his PC mostly for music, watching movies and series, chatting and surfing would appreciate myself would for instance be.

1. Setting up a working sound environment with HDMI. Let's face it, HDMI is coming more and more and in general it's a pest to get working in linux. That alone was one of two things that made me keep looking for other distros after having tried most of the popular ones. The other things was the difficulties to get my monitor and TV set up correctly, side by side and not over and under which for some reason was the only way that would be accepted by other distros, no matter what drivers I used. That and getting the primary display setting to actually stick after a reboot or shutdown.

This took care of my sound problems: http://pclosmag.com/html/Issues/201209/page08.html

This fixed the primary display  issue: http://divby0.blogspot.se/2011/11/howto-make-kde-remember-dual-monitor.html

The "extended desktop" problem was actually fixed by ATI CC in PCLOS, no idea what's done different here compared to for example another distro. It's probably set up better since it's included in the distro from start.

Some other things I've had problems with is finding players for my music and movies/series. Audacious seems to be the best for handling large collections of music, 1300 hours of music mostly in high quality flac files, other players would simply crash trying to add all the files to the library. VLC for some reason have a sync problem between picture and sound, so I'm using XBMC even though I have to run it in window mode because of problems getting it to recognizing my monitor setup.

Having PCLOS auto mount hard drives is also something I think most people "need", I think I found a topic in the forum that helped in that regard.

Setting up xchat is also something that's been a challenge, much less so though than some of the other stuff. It's mostly been about having it auto authing on startup/connection.

Even if my problems are related to very specific areas some of them are things that I think new users "expect" to, if not as easy as in windows, at least having easy accessible guides to be able to set it up properly. The most computer savvy individualls are the younger generation, and even if many of them are proned to playing games, many also have HTPC's and use PC's as a media center and could as easily, with some help, use PCLOS for that. And with steam going for the linux market I'm guessing more people might want to give linux a try in regards to playing games as well.

I know there are guides or HOWTO's for most things but it takes a lot of time to actually find any usefull information if all you want is to set up your PC to work more or less like windows. Linux is on one hand extremely customizable, much more so than windows, but sometimes there is such a thing as "too much options".

And this leads me to something that I've found very usefull in windows to make reinstalling the OS simpler and that's knowing where files are stored. In windows it's usually in program files/program files (x86) and appdata which makes it very easy to save any setups you have for your programs. I saw someone mentioning something similar earlier in this topic. Knowing which files to save would also be usefull so you simply could install the programs you usually use and then just replace the necessary files with your old saved ones to get your specific settings back even on a newly installed system.

I've already tried this and it didn't really work.

http://pclosmag.com/html/Issues/201209/page09.html

And that doesn't really save specific setting anyway I guess?

Granted, I only tried it to revert changes made to the same system, not on a completely new system.

Time to stop ranting now I think. 

I find your idea very interesting and I would be more than glad to help with this project.

It could be like a "Migrating from Windows" series of articles, starting from the basic stuff and slowly going to more advanced tips and tricks.
Of course this will be written specifically for PCLinuxOS but we could use recourses from other distros too.

For starters, we could have a list of alternative programs. It is one thing that troubled me also when I migrated from Windows. A new user has trouble finding its way through programs with strange names that he has never heard before. That list would surely be very useful.

A general description of how things work in Linux would also be very helpful. Repositories, updates, installing and uninstalling programs.

These are some random ideas. If you would like to take this project one step forward I'm here to help. We could create a new thread for further discussion.

Awesome idea, guys!!!
 

[parnote]

I would recommend that those who are interested in helping with these Windows migration articles should start making a list of specific topics that will need to be covered. Keep in mind that the scope of these articles need to be limited at to how much material is covered in each article.

Paul Arnote [parnote]
PCLinuxOS Magazine Chief Editor

[Meemaw]

I should probably share this link... since agmg brought it up...

http://www.linuxrsp.ru/win-lin-soft/table-eng.html

(alternative programs list) It's in several languages and is updated to the end of last year. I have it bookmarked but I don't use it any more, since I know what my favorite programs are by now.....  
Upon closer inspection, I see that it is missing some programs I know should be there (like LibreOffice and a few of the financial programs I reviewed a few months ago). It is a good list anyway, and might help someone.

I am sure you guys can do a wonderful series!!!