It is not so much how difficult to learn Linux is, it is the
quirks of the
implementations.

On the forums you can find multitudes of questions on problems of
installation, dual booting, start up etc. etc. many of which go unanswered
or are met with highly technical solutions (and a slightly superior air)
which are meaningless to us beginners.


Linux is largely unregulated and chaotic at times. It is not business oriented,
but is a community sandbox where everyone is welcome and nobody is turned away.
This is both good and bad.

The good is that there is lots of information and helpful people. The bad is
that there is lots of information and helpful people, but not all of it is
useful, relevant or topical because of the sheer volume, how it is presented and
some is outdated.

For someone coming from Windows, you are used to one OS with a few variants, 95,
98, XP, Vista etc. Linux has over 300 distributions and dozens of variants of
some of them, such as somebody running a certain distro, but with an alternative
desktop. There are some many permutations and combinations.

However, the biggest problem is that most veterans are not newbie aware or
savvy. They post solutions that the average user has no hope of following or
being able to implement. They forget that most former Windows users have not
seen a command prompt. Their thinking is not about what the user needs, but
about how THEY would resolve it which are different things.

This is unresolvable in the short run or at least until more newbies have enough
success that they can tell other newbies how to fix it because they remember
what it felt like to be a newbie. Newbies need to be aware that they should NOT
try every possible solution. If it sounds too hard, it probably is and you are
more likely to get yourself into deeper water than to resolve the situation.

I maintain that Linux is not as hard as people make it out to be and that there
are often easier solutions to most problems than the ones often given by Linux
veterans. There is a huge credibility gap if we are saying that Linux is user
friendly and the only solutions that we can give are to go the commandline. This
is usually NOT the case, but it is what the person who is helping would do.
There are frequently multiple solutions to any problem.

Newbies need to say, that they do not feel comfortable and ask if there is
another simpler solutions. They also need some patience as this is new territory
for everyone. We speak jargon to one another and we need to learn to tone it
down when speaking to newcomers.