New Linux user training?

[Craig White]

On Wed, 2008-02-13 at 21:55 -0700, Alan Dayley wrote:
> My father (actively retired and now at 70+ years old) has recently
> purchased a new Eee PC.  He really likes it!  He surprised me and did
> NOT order Windows XP to go with it.  I have been helping him with a few
> things.  It has been an interesting experience.
> 
> One evening we were confirming that his 8GB SD card was working
> properly.  He claimed it would not.  We discovered that the path to the
> card when inserted in the system was /media/SD_MMC (or something like
> that).  He wondered, of course, why it was not "drive D:"  And then he
> made a comment to this effect:
> 
> "Am I going to have to learn lots of new things with this.  Maybe I
> should just buy Windows for it since I already know that."
> 
> I am able to handle this situation.  I mean, it's my dad and I'll help
> him.  I am expanding this experience to a wider picture.  I'd like to
> hear about other experiences and ideas around new Linux user training.
> 
> What training resources have you seen work?
> 
> How can such training best be presented or used?
> 
> How have you overcome objections to learning or using Linux on the desktop?
> 
> And so on?
----
1 - he should join a support list. You didn't say which distro he's using but I think it would be of benefit to both of you if he had a means to solve problems/get answers that didn't rely solely on you.

2 - book...Linux for Dummies might be too generic and out of date but perhaps there's a distro book that tracks what he has installed.

3 - Tell him that he indeed can install Windows and have a 'dual boot' system, thereby making sure that the decision to running Linux is always his and not just to please you.

4 - Give him methodologies/bookmarks/concepts for solutions...
  - how to use konqueror to read man pages
  - www.tldp.org
  - google.com/linux
  - unleash him on PLUG ;-)

Craig