A Quick Start guide has been uploaded to the Linux platform support here.

Comments are appreciated.

It is currently a draft but it is better and more involved than the "cheat sheet" we shipped with the system.

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Matt Sealey

it's just not the same without an OF chapter..

; )

good guide all around, cannot think of anything else needed to get a new user up and running.

Well, you shouldn't need to think about the firmware in the best cases :)

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Matt Sealey

Very fine, i learnt the oem-config trick.

Maybe it's a little bit too easy, there are many things obvious for a linux user ( even for me ;-) ).

Perhaps should you write that ssh is already installed and therefore we can connect to the efika mx without a screen (this is the way i do).

Do you need a french translation ?

Advanced topic. If you knew that then you wouldn't be reading the Quickstart Guide. Also most of it is concerned with installing a desktop: not possible over SSH (or serial board :)

As for being "too easy", it is just as obvious that many users here may not that proficient in Linux (like the difference between /dev/sda and /dev/sda1 for example :), or at least not familiar with Debian/Ubuntu after a lifetime of RedHat or so, or simply do not have a wealth of knowledge on what Ubuntu package naming is like, and really need this "start" documentation.
Nope :)

Documentation is always in flux and having people translate into languages just means a document released one day is only available in English for a month, then everyone finishes the translations just in time to be obselete by the next documentation.

I really do not feel like wasting peoples' time translating a document I may update every 2 weeks or even make a release twice a day. You will also need to keep all the formatting of the document (there will be some), which requires Word 2007. I can't expect you guys to have to do all that..

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Matt Sealey

Ah! I was waiting for this backstab ;-)

I think the actual customers must be the early adopters, let's say geek, and have a good overall knowledge of linux.
But such a quickstart guide is helpful.

On the other end it may be too difficult.
For example i'm the "IT manager" of a medical group of 6 doctors, and i'm the only one to be quite fluent in computer wizardry (imagine the others ;-)) and speaking of desktop installation, apt-get etc. is, at best, ancient-chinese for the other five (and they're quite young). Even if they knew the product and interested in, it's a giant leap...


So i understand it is hard to find a balance between being thorough and being short.

NG

No problem :)

It serves to basically get down what to do, to teach those who do not know, and to remind those who do exactly what it is (in case they make mistakes or are still getting used to how the Efika MX "handles").
Indeed.
Indeed :) We have had a few people who have a history from MorphOS, and while they are quite technical minded, Linux is a far leap in some places. Others are used to RPM-based distributions or even other UNIX systems (Solaris, FreeBSD) which do not have apt-get. At the very least it serves as a quick "where to plug everything in" doc (or will when I get to that part) and how to get a desktop installed without even thinking about it.

The next installer system, which I hope to be shipping on 2GB SD cards *with* every Efika sold at some point, will be able to flash U-Boot from inside Linux, set up wireless for installation and do all this stuff from inside a chroot from the SD card (therefore meaning you shutdown the Efika MX, take out the SD card and then it boots right into a desktop). Maybe it'll have a nice ncurses (or maybe Qt/Embedded.. or maybe just dialog/gdialog) GUI for progress bars and questions.

It will still need documenting.

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Matt Sealey