Training Tips for New Linux Users
At my college, I have volunteered to teach faculty, staff, and students the advantages of using Linux. After doing it for a couple of years, I have come up with a few tips that others might find helpful when showing new Linux users the ropes.
Step 1: Know Your Audience:
I can’t stress this one enough. Your presentations and instructions need to be tailored to your audience. If it isn’t, you can loose the interest of your audience or cause them to become lost. Who do you plan on training? I find that most users fall into one of three categories:
The Basic User – This is the type of user who uses their computer for email, word processing, Internet browsing, and some multimedia uses. For example, my mother is this type of user, she sees a computer as a tool; something to be used when needed for productivity or entertainment.
The Power User – This is the type of user who really enjoys being on computers. They see the computer as a hobby. They use computers for all the reasons that Basic Users do but also love to tweak things and try out new things on the computer. They will try things as long as they can understand it quickly and not get too frustrated. If they are a Windows user, you will see them using third party applications to tweak how it looks and how it works. Many of them know what Open Source software is and some of the advantages are. Computers are not a Power User’s life, but they do enjoy being on them and tend to do some customizing with them. Most gamers fall under this category.
The Super User – The biggest difference between a Super User and a Power User is that while Power Users view computers as a hobby, Super Users view them as their life. Their whole career revolves around computers and the use of them. These are the types of people who have heard of Linux, and many of them may have tried to use if if they are not already. These people tend to be software engineers, information technology specialists, and many others.
While the lines of these categories can be blurred and it isn’t perfect it’s a good way to assess who your audience might be. Try to come up with as much information about your audience ahead of time as you can. Try to categorize them as much as you can. Sometimes you may have all three types of users in your audience. If this is the case, I find it’s helpful to explain to your audience that you will keep it simple, and should anyone have any questions, you can escalate your complexity on a case by case basis. This allows you to keep your basic users from getting too lost, and keep your power and super users interested.
Quentin Hartman has written a good article about the Difficulty Divide between users of Linux and users of Windows. This type of thought process can help you identify your audience members.
One other important thing to think about, is the motivations for your audience to be there. In my case, all of my audience members were volunteers. They had no obligation to be at my workshops. In some cases this might not be the case. This can make a difference in how you need to approach your audience. If they have a choice, you can focus more on how they can go about doing things they normally would do, like Internet browsing, media consumption, and productivity. If they are present at your workshop because they have to be, you might take more of a training approach. You can spend less time on things that the user might like to do, and spend more on what they need to do.
Step 2: Pick Your Distribution:
After using Fedora, Madrivia, Debian, Puppy, Damn Small Linux, PCLinuxOS, Kubuntu, Xubuntu, Edubuntu, and Ubuntu, I decided that the easiest to train new users on was Ubuntu. You may come up with a different conclusion. The important thing is to put yourself in the shoes of your audience. I chose Ubuntu because it is scalable to all different types of users. I knew that my audience was going to be a mix of the three categories and I tried to find a distribution that would work for the most new people. In some cases this decision is made for you. In some corporations or schools, the decision has already been made for their own purposes. This has its advantages and disadvantages for you the instructor. The biggest advantage is that you will not have to spend time researching distributions, you can spend that time developing your ideas on what and how to teach your audience about that distribution. The biggest disadvantage is that you might not get the distribution you feel is the best to start new users with.
When choosing a distribution you can ask yourself these questions: Is this distribution catered to new users? Is is good for our organization/corporation/school? Do I know enough about it to show other users? How advanced to my topics need to be? These questions can help guide you to pick a distribution that fits your audience’s needs.
Step 3: Plan Your Lesson
Some people think that they can just show up, show a few features, and just wing it the whole way through. I can tell you from experience, you can easily fall into this trap. The problem with just teaching on the fly is that you will miss some very important information, and your audience will not receive the important facts they need to know. I found it’s best to have a game plan, but to not have a rigid schedule.
The first time I ever had a new users’ workshop, I had been allotted an hour to show the benefits of Ubuntu. I planned for 50 minutes of lecture and 10 minutes of question time. This was almost disastrous. Chances are, if you have a diverse group of people, you are not going to know every possible use a user is going to have for their operation system. They will have questions, and a lot of them. Plan on a lot of time being needed for questions. This can mean that you lecture and take questions afterward, or allow for questions while you are presenting. I found that a 2/3rds rule is pretty effective. Plan on providing 2/3rds of your time in content, and questions will fill the other third. This will obviously be different depending on your audience situation (did I mention step 1 was important?). If you are on a one-on-one basis, it follows that you will have more of a conversation with your audience rather than a lecture hall with 30-40 people, where you might provide more of a lecture experience.
No matter what your format, you should have a set list of topics you wish to cover. Make sure you go over those topics, but allow for your audience to have some control over what you present. This will allow them to ask for information you might not have thought about giving, and allows for you to give them information they might not have thought about asking for. Some good topics to choose from include, but are not limited to: GUI differences, User accounts, Internet browsing, media consumption, productivity, and connectivity.
Step 4: Presentation
Because you are teaching to an audience all public speaking rules apply. Dress appropriately. You want your audience to take you seriously. The more professional you look, the more professional your presentation will be. You need to know your material. Practice it. Make sure everything will work before you do it. Nothing is worse than trying to show how something is done, and having to troubleshoot on the fly. Will you be projecting your presentation on a screen? Do you have enough battery if you don’t have a power outlet? Will you have Internet access in the location you are presenting in? These are things that may seem trivial, but can become a nuisance very quickly if they are not taken care of.
Short demonstrations work the best. For things that take a long time between steps, or for things that take a while to load, it may be a good idea to do the cooking show idea. If you have a piece of software that takes a few seconds to load (like OpenOffice on my slow laptop), you can have them already loaded and ready to go on another virtual desktop. This way you can demo two things at once. Multiple virtual desktops, and the application of choice.
Be friendly. Whether you’re trying to win people over to the enlightened world of FOSS, or in charge of training new users, you are not going to get anywhere if your audience thinks you are acting elitist or rude. A smile and “please and thank you’s” go a long way.
Ask Questions. While your audience is sure to ask you things, you by all means can ask questions of them. One example I use is: “GNU/Linux is an open source operating system. Who here knows what open source means?” If you get lots of hands or bored looks, chances are your audience doesn’t need an explanation. Blank stares probably means a short definition might be in order.
Know your limits. You are not going to do anyone any good if you are trying to impart knowledge to others if you don’t have the knowledge yourself. If someone asks you a question you don’t know the answer to, be honest. Most likely they will understand that you can’t know everything and as long as you show a willingness to point them in the right direction, they will be happy. At the end of every session I ever did, I passed out little sheets of paper with URLs for help and other resources. My two favorites are the Ubuntu Forums and the Open Source Alternatives websites.
Step 5: Be Willing to Help
This last step is what will make or break your new users’ experiences. You should be there to help them get over the first few hurdles. They will be unfamiliar with this new environment and will turn to the one person who showed them this new world. It’s up to you to shepherd them for a while until they can stand on their own two feet. If you can, try to teach them how to find their own help. This will help you lessen your help load a lot later on (you catch a fish, you feed them a meal… You teach them to fish, they eat for a lifetime). Be patient. If you were once a person on another OS, remember what it was like for you, and then pretend it was 10 times harder. That’s probably what a novice feels like. If you always grew up with Linux, try learning Windows. That’s what your audience feels like.
Tips:
- Be polite
- Speak clearly
- Have Patience
- Practice
- Put yourself in their shoes
- KNOW YOUR AUDIENCE
If you noticed, most of these tips involved very few technical tips, and included lots of personal skills. That’s because content is trumped by the presentation and personality of the trainer.
Hopefully these ideas help someone. If you have other tips, technical or not, please leave a comment with your tips and suggestions.
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I enjoyed your article very much it had many good pieces of advice. Maybe you could help train trainers for events like http://www.lindependence.net/
quote: I chose Ubuntu because it is scalable to all different types of users. I knew that my audience was going to be a mix of the three categories and I tried to find a distribution that would work for the most new people.
In what way does Mandriva ot PCLinuxOS, for that matter, not scale. All of my new users use Mandriva, they have no particular difficulty with it. So please tell me in what way does Mandriva not, as you put it scale to different types of users, or even new users?
@tracyanne
I’m sure you noticed, by the color scheme if nothing else, that this site has a focus on Ubuntu. That being the case, I think it is quite understandable that they might have a bit of a bias
Ubuntu is currently my favorite distro. However, tracyanne does have a point, that what is easy to do in Ubuntu is often also easy to do in Mandriva, Fedora, etc. Distro wars tend to amuse me, as they are all made up of mostly the same bits.
@Patrick
Good post. You summarized some of the same things I’ve learned while teaching others about technology, especially Linux. Another thing that I found that helps in group sessions is to try to have a few other knowledgeable users standing on the side, to give more individual assistance to people who are having problems.
I also posted this under another topic, so forgive me for the repetition, but these thoughts always come to mind when one hears about the relative merits of a given Linux distribution …
We gotta stop fussin’ ’bout which distro is best … it’s obvious that everyone has their favorite. THE issue in getting Windows users to consider Linux is compatibility. For the average Windows user
1. Linux needs to be easily installed [less and less a problem, it seems, except that the average Windows user
won’t either know about, or consider doing, a partitioning of his C drive, for fear of data loss [Wubi is a huge help here!!]]
2. Will be put off if Linux can’t connect to the same hardware that Windows will connect to.
3. Information must be easily made available about Windows application counterparts in Linux.
Squaring away these items seems much more important than whether the desktop if KDE or Gnome [what’s all that about?, asks the Wondows user?]. I mean, most users do Applications, not gaze at the Desktop!
Thanks for this, it is both well written and informative!
I agree with the last comment that we need to stop ‘fussin’ about which distro is the best. Currently I a Ubunbu fanboy, I think its great. My opinion and whenever I suggest Linux to someone I always suggest Ubuntu. In a week/month/year that may be different.
http://tnetech.net
@tracyanne : I chose Ubuntu over Mandrivia and PCLinuxOS not because of scalability, but specifically because of the need for a root password. Many of the new users I talked to found the concept of root too confusing, but found administrator vs. non-administrator users easier to understand. This was why I chose Ubuntu over them. I should have made that more clear in the article. I’ll see about adding it.
@everyone: Thank you for your comments, I always appreciate the compliments and especially the critiques.
Thanks for your beautiful article..
I am just a student but, when I share my knowledge to my friends, I came across those problems you pointed out. Now I better try your way of teaching…
If you’re introducing a new user to linux why choose a gnome based distro – unless all your users are coming from MacOS. Why not choose a KDE based distro?
@Alex Adamo – I chose GNOME over KDE because it is simpler to instruct with. KDE has some great usability, but gnome is very categorical. I also was told by some users and teachers that if you are teaching something new, it’s best to keep it new. Trying to show something very similar might confuse people of differences. By showing something completely different, users will expect differences. Showing something similar will make users expect exactitude.
It really came down to preference. Like I had said in the post, know your limits. I knew a lot more about GNOME than I did about KDE, that said, others might find a different approach works for them. Your presentation will trump content, so if you know KDE better, teach KDE. If you know GNOME better, teach GNOME.
Well if you’ve got users that don’t understand the concept of root but do understand the concept of administrator I guess you have your hands full.
I would have thought that the task bar being on the top instead of on the bottom would really cause problems.
“If you know GNOME better, teach GNOME” – that I understand and will shut the he*% up.
@Alex Adamo- I never meant to be insulting. So please do not “shut up.” It’s discussions like this that help improve my teaching as well as iron out any discrepancies I have in my own decisions.
As far as users not understanding root; many of the users I was teaching could understand it, but some could not. I had a very wide range of people come to my workshops. I had anyone from super simple users (MS Word is almost too much for them) to computer science majors. The simple users might not have even used the terms administrative users and regular users, but they understood that some users should have more privileges than others. This allowed for simple instruction later on.
I did have some users ask about root, and I gave them instructions on how to enable the root account if they wished. Since Linux is about choice, I try to give my new users as much as I can, but try to keep it from overwhelming them. Show them a little; show them how to find out more, and they will wonder why they couldn’t do any of it before.
“I would have thought that the task bar being on the top instead of on the bottom would really cause problems.” – Surprisingly it didn’t. The fact that it said “Applications” at the top gave it away. Since I demonstrated on a nearly clean install I was able to demo exactly what they would see. I also had LiveCD’s available to “follow along” with me if they wanted too and brought their own laptop. Once a user sees it done and can do it themselves, they get it and can make their own working model in their head about how it works.
Hope that helps clarify some things. You’ve got some really good points.
My Win XP desktop is set up with the taskbar on top – just easier for me to see, as it’s near all the other “bars”. Shorter mouse travel.
I don’t think it’s things like this that cause problems with Linux or any operating system. Whether KDE or Gnome is more like what the Mac or Windows user is familiar with isn’t “the issue”. It’s the USE of Linux – its ability to do the things that Windows/Mac users take for granted [wifi connections, ability to read DVDs, reasonably competent applications that correspond with Win/Mac apps] — that will carry the day [or not] for Linux.
You can choose Pardus which is aiming Desktop users. It is a KDE based distro. Provides lots of easy to use tools, including user, network, and package managers, and windows migration tool.
Pardus with its unique init rewrite in python boots very fast. With its other unique features it is very stable. You can use it as an server easily.
[...] I can’t stress this one enough. Your presentations and instructions need to be tailored to your audience. If it isn’t, you can loose the interest of your audience or cause them to become lost. Who do you plan on training? I find that most users fall into one of three categories: Read more at Works With U [...]
@Egeman Metin Turan – I have not tried Pardus. I will have to look at it. Thanks for the tip.
Great article. I agree with you about Ubuntu since I install this distro on refurbished PCs for the digital divide. Our small organisation of two permanent one day a fortnight volunteers manages to supply about 400 systems a year.
We set up our machines with all the codecs and some extra applications like a typing tutor, VLC, and TuxPaint.
We actually clone the drives from our currently updated generic source machine which only takes 10 minutes and run the video re-configuration and a few tests on the target.
We give clients a short 20-40 minute run down, where they boot the system and login. In the GUI we show them the applications, the places, and the system menus first. We launch OpenOffice and show them how to save a dot doc file,
We plug in a USB key that pops up a folder listing.
We open the home folder from places and show them how to find the file, drag and drop copy to the key and then delete the original file.
Next we show them how to add a new user, introducing the unlock sudo password. Then we get them to log out and log in as the new user and show them that sudo won’t work for the new user.
The penultimate application to show is Firefox before we let them loose on Compiz Fusion, always a big hit.
The final application, if you can call it that, is the Add/Remove button. This is missing on Mandriva although they have got the message about sudo for newbies. Add/Remove is a fantastic utility for newbies. The applications have icons and rating stars, and are listed in applications menu headings, making it much easier for newbies to identify application than on the geeky synaptic interface.
We get them to copy some howtos from our key onto the computer. One shows pictorially how to use synaptic. For those who show an obvious need another shows how to load and run a Windows shareware application, and yet another on howto setup and run XP in a VirtualBox. That usually eases all their fears as they never email for help.
If the client is a bit geeky, we give them a copy of the Mandriva Live install CD and let them play with it live for a bit before they take the system away.
Many clients already know about Linux, so they don’t need the full run down. They know that is what is going to loaded on the machine they ordered at least a week in advance. But surprisingly, here in the wilds of Brisbane Australia, a lot more people than one would expect from the supposed minute market share, know about Linux, and even about Ubuntu, Mandriva and Redhat.
Just a word of warning about the changing the installation sudo user on Ubuntu. If you decide to give a new user admin priviledges, and delete the install one, you may have to change the new user name ID to 1000, as some utilities like adding a new printer may not work without this ID.
This was a fantastic article, really a help for me. While I don’t teach formal classes, I have installed Linux on my family’s home pc. This was before I left for college and did all my playing around on that computer. Since then my family gets frustrated when problems arise. This involves mostly my father, who gets really worked up over the fact that he can’t download and install games from Yahoo (Why you want 30 minute demos I don’t know;) ). This is to my fault though, I never showed him how to install.
@KDE advocates:
personally, KDE confuses the daylights out of me. When I first tried linux that is what was given to me by Xandros. Not that it’s bad, I just don’t know it. My favorite is Xfce, partly because of it’s speed, and to me, it’s intuitive, things are where I think they should be, again, partly because I’m used to it. So I suppose I feel KDE how Windows converts feel with linux, haha.
I seriously think that the thing most needed right now for Linux popularity is ‘alot’ of video tutorials/guides. Why only show 30 or so people how you did something when you could show a million?? big ups to showmedo and the few compiz show-offs on youtube… I learnt to use a computer (mostly) by looking over someone’s shoulder or following instructions over the phone and (like alot of other people) find this the easiest way to learn …I just hope that the Linux Community will catch on to this fact, ps: ubuntu has started using this approach but there’s “heaps” more to the OS than installing automatix dude…!
There is ubuntuscreecasts, ubuntu video, and a whole lot of other resource websites available on the net already.
This is great. I wish I had come across it sooner. I gave an informative presentation on Ubuntu for a college speech class. Everyone liked the presentation, even with my poor public speaking habits. I still got an A though. But man, these tips would have been a huge help.
@DJ:
Isn’t that interesting. When I was first introduced to Linux Gnome confused the daylights out of me. I had no idea that it was supposed to be more simple because it had less options. To me KDE was more natural because the options were laid out in a fairly easy to see and navigate manner. I was also a Windows power user at the time.
The basis of the article is sound. Not everyone uses their computers in the same way. People are interested in how well Linux can work for them with what they are currently doing. One of the biggest questions I have gotten recently, with all this netbook craze, is how easily can I share .doc files? OpenOffice makes this nearly a non-issue for most users. They don’t care if it is open source or not, they just want it to be as useful as their current computing environment.