[Wine] RFD: create new list and forum 'wine-newbies'

[Mark Knecht]

On Sun, Mar 23, 2008 at 10:12 PM, Dan Kegel <dank at kegel.com> wrote:
> On Sun, Mar 23, 2008 at 8:35 PM, James McKenzie
>  <jjmckenzie51 at sprintpcs.com> wrote:
>  >  I'm willing to help with the newbie problems if they are new and the
>  >  program is publically accessible.
>
>  I think that puts us over the edge.  We now have Austin, Mark, and myself
>  willing to monitor the new group and help out.
>  And as Ove pointed out, if there are enough people in
>  the group, they'll be able to help each other whatever
>  their skill level.
>
>  I think that a wine-newbies group right next to wine-users would
>  naturally arrange for most of the "I just left Windows and I
>  need help adjusting to the whole linux thing AND wine"
>  questions to be separated from the "I love wine but
>  this one app has this problem" questions.  And, since
>  the two forums would be right next to each other, the
>  barrier to jumping between them should be low.
>  - Dan

Hi Dan,
Again, I'm not a big supporter of this idea, but in an attempt to be
supportive and get in the flow here's some continued ideas. Possibly
if newbies just had the resources to do this much first it will help.

I wonder if there is a gentle way to get newbies to go find demo
versions themselves that we can download and try out ourselves,
understanding there are fewer things that we can do if there aren't
demo versions of the program available.

There is probably a whole class of things we want them to try first,
or at least be aware of the possibilities of trying first. I'm
thinking of the person who is curious about Wine, but clearly not
committed. This might be their very first try. Possibly they have
hardly used Open Source. They *might* use Wine if things work easily.
They still have a Windows machine and will use that if Wine doesn't
work out easily for them. Some things I thought of:

1) Instructions on checking the AppDB first
2) Asking then to try the newest version of Wine
3) Clean Wine directory, saving their old one if necessary
4) Specific things to do with winecfg to set up Wine before installing
5) Possibly winetricks. (But I think not as I don't know how to
recommend a specfic course of action using winetricks like Dan does.
I'm interested in learning more but installing dlls probably isn't the
first thing they should do IMO.)

If they do come to wine-newbies with questions then what do we want
them to provide?

Maybe having a *very* simple Newbies web page that lists a few things
out in a short, simple list would help them present their issues in a
semi-standard way? Something very clean, simple and not more than a
few hundred words of guidance to get them started in how they
interface with us, but keeping the onus on them to start finding their
own solutions. It could be linked to on the Getting Help page. I
personally think all the links there are too complicated for the true
'newbie'.

It's sometimes quite hard for advanced people to understand just how
unclear complicated things like Wine are to someone who's never used
it before, just wants to play a game, and doesn't have the temperament
to do tons of reading to get a PhD. I've been guilty of this myself at
times.

Just some thoughts,
Mark