Installation Guide 0.4

[Stuart Ellis]

Since I'll be way for a while, it'll be some time before I can work
through the comments and update the text.  Thanks for (as always) a
detailed set of feedback.

On Mon, 20 Dec 2004 16:26:03 -0800 (PST), "Rahul Sundaram"
<rahulsundaram at yahoo.co.in> said:
> 
> You might want to write a more cheerful and less
> technical introduction

Definitely.  I've written the Introduction twice and still don't like it
much - it lacks energy.  I came to the conclusion that much of the
problem was focus - it has to clearly state what Fedora Core is and why
the reader should  be interested enough to spend two hours installing
and setting it up.
  
> End users typically might not under what open source
> or 64/32 bit systems means. Try throwing around words
> like user friendly, full blown office,suites, games
> and stuff if you are targetting newbies esp desktop 
> users

When I thought about the the target audience I actually came to a
different view.  I admit this that this is entirely based on my
experience and may be totally wrong, but FWIW here were my assumptions,
in no particular order:

- The main audience for FC are people interested in IT.  They may be
enthusiasts, students or professionals.  The last group include people
involved in science and research but not necessarily trained in IT,
although they use it heavily (I was surprised by the number of people
involved in research and academia on the development list).

- We can safely assume some knowledge of Windows, but this is tricky
because Windows enables people to do some technically complex things
without being aware of the underlying technology.  Linux tends to demand
understanding before you can get things to work...

- We can't assume any knowledge of UNIX or Linux, even though a lot of
people now have a little.  Since a lot of Linux users are learning
piecemeal, rather than through academic courses or job-releated
training, you can't assume that a user will know any specific piece of
information that isn't in the document.

- So the user will assume that any new thing that they aren't familiar
will work like Windows.

- Computers, routers etc. are cheap enough that (in Europe anyway)
anyone who wants a network will have one.  A lot of the queries on
LinuxQuestions relate to networks, and in many cases home networks. 
Interestingly this means that DHCP and network connectivity are nearly
everywhere, stand-alone computers and static IPs are exceptional rather
than the default.

- We can't make assumptions about hardware.  As well as non x86
architectures, it's cheap enough to build a computer with multiple NICs,
RAID etc. that a home machine can look like a corporate server if the
user wants.  There's enough surplus boxes around now that it might
actually *be* an ex-corporate server.

- Since people also use Fedora for testing, development or just teaching
themselves, the network may look like a corporate network as well, and
may actually be a corporate or academic network (dorms, research and
teaching labs etc.).  This is why the Introduction has a note about not
installing on an existing network without talking to the
administrators...

- The balance of the questions etc. that I've seen suggest that Linux is
primarily being used as a server, development platform or as a hobby. 
The primary desktop is probably still Windows, though this now seems to
be shifting.

- We can't assume where they got FC from.  In the UK newsagents stock
dozens of magazines, and in a large town there will be Linux magazines
in the computing section.  Also Linux books in the bookshops.  Most of
these include discs with Linux distributions.  The Government-sponsored
academic network (JANet) maintains public mirrors of education-related
software that are dominated by Linux.  These are hit very heavily for
days when new releases come out.

I've probably forgotten some.  It'll be very interesting to see from the
list feedback what the main areas of interest actually are.
--

Stuart Ellis
s.ellis at fastmail.co.uk