Red Hat Bugzilla – Bug 75257
pico examples in GSG can confuse new users, since pico's not installed by default
Last modified: 2014-08-04 18:14:03 EDT
Description of Problem: The Getting Started Guide uses pico as an example editor in several places, such as editing /etc/fstab for Windows partition access. The instructions in the GSG are very clear, and most new users are capable of following them. But pico's not installed by default, at least not in RH 8.0, and this can be a bit confusing/frustrating for novices trying to follow the examples in the GSG. Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable): rhl-gsg-en-8.0-4 How Reproducible: Every time. (At least with novice users.) Steps to Reproduce: 1. Tell new user to read the GSG for answer to common questions, such as having their Windows partition automatically mounted 2. Send new user a link to a GSG page (such as the one I've put in the URL field of this form). Actual Results: 1. New user reads GSG, tries to follow instructions 2. Runs 'pico /etc/fstab' 3. Gets "command not found" message 4. User comes back saying "Help! It didn't work! What did I do wrong?" Expected Results: 1. New user reads GSG, follows instructions 2. Instructions work 3. Happy user! :-) Additional Information: This isn't a major issue -- I'm just thinking that it would avoid some frustration for inexperienced users if the examples in the guides could be followed with a typical "straight out of the box" installation. It seems like it'd be easy to tweak things a little to support this. Some possible approaches: - Change GSG to use vi for examples (I think vi's always installed, although some people might debate whether it's novice-friendly) - Or perhaps add a section to the GSG telling user how to install pico. (The new 8.0 Add/Remove util should make this a pleasantly painless task that anyone could handle.) For extra friendliness points, add a link to the "Installing pico" page in other sections of the guide that use pico as an example editor. - Or maybe just add pico (well, pine, really) to the list of packages that're installed by default
You raise a very good point. The documentation should reflect usage of the applications included in a standard desktop installation, or at least instructions on how to install the pine package to get pico. The next version of the Getting Started Guide will be amended to add such instruction, depending on the best approach to documenting text-editing issues for new users. Thank you very much for your suggestions. The Getting Started Guide will continue to improve due in large part to great reader feedback.