Linux may have some drawbacks, doesn’t everything? As said before, gaming isn’t great, but really was it great when Windows first started? It took quite a few years before anyone realized that their was a huge cash cow in computer games for PCs, sure there was casual interest, but can you really imagine today’s teens getting into an ASCII rogue-like? Every year though there are more and more games made to be able to run on Linux environments, and even some made to specifically run on Linux environments.

I say let’s focus on what we have and keep bringing on new people with more guides like this that can help remove the hurdles that exist mostly in the minds of those who haven’t seen how far the community has come. The next time you hear someone say they don’t think they could do Linux, just smile and ask if they can point and click, when they say yes, you can honestly say they can.

Really.. Fk up mate. Ubuntu is not Linux. It’s trying to be, but fortunately there’s more than one distro in use around the web. If you’re going to blast a guide, then at least use valid reasons. Don’t backtrack. You look like a jerk then. Ubuntu is included under Linux but is not the only distro going by that name. Yes, the guide assumes the user is using Ubuntu (marketing is working there..) but it’s reasonably transferable to other distro’s.

On another note, yes, for a Windows user, or Mac users especially (that’s not meant as a flame comment, it’s just that Windows users include gamers and they’re usually more tech orientated. Skews the data a bit and Mac is built to be simple), the console is indeed an advanced tool. But the other comment was right, you _do_ need to learn to use it. It’s not hard, Linux distro’s are usually pretty good when it comes to console language. Standard, regular, nothing too non-sequitur and it can improve your Linux experience by quite a bit if you know even the basics of using it. Being able to move around, open and close files does wonders for when you can’t figure out where something is stored in a particular distro.

On a side note, if the OP does make it Ubuntu specific, it’s no longer a guide to Linux, it’s a guide to Ubuntu. And we already have a freaking ton of those.. If you make it generic, it’s useful. If you make it Ubuntu only, you’ve made it into “just anther Ubuntu guide”. At the moment, the guide has a nice intro to the console and is pretty good for Linux, don’t ruin it. Oh, and yea. Mint is more user friendly than Ubuntu. Ubuntu just has the most marketing $$$ behind it. The MSFT of the OSS world really.

And last note, programs like Synaptic aren’t really all that great. I installed Fedora a while ago, then Ubuntu to try it out and they both sucked. The respository had programs that were quite a few releases behind. Yea, I know, it’s best to have stable programs. But bug fixes, security updates, etc are all missed out when it’s like that. I last used Ubuntu again 2 versions ago and the repository was still a major pain. Much better to give the guide an intro to compiling packages. That isn’t hard either. A few websites have a heap of makefiles stored with the most current programs available. Even that is a lot better than just relying on the repository.

Last gripe. Promise. =P
You say that it’s only “hard-core gamers” that Linux isn’t suitable for. It’s actually all gamers. Linux as a whole is improving rapidly, but without decent support for graphics cards, drivers at least, then all gaming is hard on Linux. The old excuse was that companies like nVidia wouldn’t give out the source code to the drivers, it was all closed which was the reason that support was so bad. Again, I haven’t checked them recently, better things to do really. But unless there’s some good reverse engineers going at it, Windows or even Mac is still a better platform over Linux. It’s improving, and should get there soon. Just not quite yet.

For all that, it’s a great guide. Too much publicity for Ubuntu, they’re strangling other distro’s and they aren’t even the best out there. But apart from that, nice work. Wish I’d had a copy when I tried using Linux. From Windows to Linux is a pretty big step.

Set Up an Unmanaged VPS (4 Newbies) .. The V-P-S Bible

I hope that’s handy. It DOES use the console, which is NOT an advanced tool

(My VCR is an advanced tool)