[openbeos] The Newbie perspective
- From: Miguel Zúñiga González <mzuniga@xxxxxxx>
- To: openbeos@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Tue, 13 Jul 2004 00:13:05 -0500
Hello everyone,
I write this as a way to say congratulations to you all for doing this
work, to ask for Jeffery Biss, Michell Phipps, general news from here,
and to give an opinion, or "my perspective" of this great project, so,
if you are short of time, you can skip the next 5 paragraphs.
About a year and a half a cousin of mine asked me: "What is BeOS?, Have
you ever heard about it?" When this happened, I already had knew about
BeOS and the BeOS sales related, so I answered: "Is a OS that will be no
longer supported", and that was it. I am not a computer expert, or a
programmer, or even an advanced computer user, but I had some pocket
money installing networks, and at high school I was on the computer
labs, so I had to install and manage hardware and software. In a
complete clueless land, I was the only one who could install M$ Windows
or RedHat Linux in a machine, and the only one the school knew that had
had contact with an Apple machine, so, I was the less ignorant.
Then I downloaded from BeBits the top piece of software I could get: the
BeOS 5 personal edition. I realized it was easer to install than any
other OS I knew. Then, I could get the BeOS 5.04 Developer Edition,
which I have installed until today. When I read some people were in the
BeOS rescue, I couldn't resist, so I signed in. Aaron Kavlie make it
possible for me to get in touch with Jeffery Biss, one of the most
dedicated people I have ever known. He told me what to do, and I began
to work. (I guess that is no surprise)
Then time passed, and some things happened: I got sick, I recovered, I
had the money to buy a new PC, my brother bought a Mac, I lost all my
data once, and I never made a back-up of it, of course, including my Be
part. I got sick again, then school overwhelmed me, then finally ended
it. Now I am planning to get my degree. What do I tell all this? To make
it very clear that I do my best effort, but I can consider myself a
newbie.
As a newbie, I can tell the excitement of being a project with such a
challenge like this. Notice everyone wants to have it, like it was a
piece of cake "to bake it". I know people which are Linux programmers,
Java programmers, and related ones, so I can describe the feeling of
them:
The OS you are building is the answer in the middle between the two
borders in software options: having to pay US$290 to have M$ Windows or
to have 24/7 time to configure Linux. Those are the available options. I
cannot say anything in pro or con to any of them, but as I wrote, this
is the Newbie perspective.
I read from your sources that only 1% of the people in the computer
world know the OSBOS, but that is, in part, because we (please, let me
say we) lack of newbie documentation available from the official sites.
I mean general information, focused information and information relative
to all of this, but in a basic view. What do I mean? Just look at your
forum: people are asking how to install Haiku-OS, how to deal with it,
and why they do not see any graphical interface when they load (if they
could) the Haiku-loader.
When you have M$ Windows or an almost commercial distribution of Linux,
there are some files to help you to know the system. We have to have
them done. But in the Haiku site there is no way to know how to get into
the BeOS, Haiku official documentation, or the status of the different
teams. I know all you know how to, but as a newbie I remember all the
time I spent to get the BeOS DevEd, or to have the drivers I did not
have, etcetera.
I see this has in part being solved, but we need to get all the people
interested in the same channel: there are people offering help in the
Haiku site, and there are communities all over the Web. Not only in
English, but in several languages, because a key to succeed is to have
the documentation available in as many languages as we can.
With this mail I am offering help in the Haiku site, to encourage people
to participate at basic level, giving to them some answers and letting
the experts doing the expert job. Kurtis Kopf is a genius, but even he
has to rest, and he has so much work to do!
I do not say I have nothing to do, or that I could have that enormous
package, but I really wish to help you to improve the contents in the
site, and to contact those Be communities! Please, let me do it, I
promise I will not let you down. Now I have free time and I want to do
something to help.
How could you trust in me? I am translating the BeBook to Spanish. I
have done 20% of it, and I promised myself to finish no matter what. I
am writing to this forum because my name was on it.
Thank you so much for reading this, for the time you invested on it, and
I will be looking forward to read news from you. Be Well.
Miguel Zúñiga González
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