i converted by 45 year old uncle over to Mandrake 10 , KDE after years and years of Windoze..

I know there's a ton of info on the web, but I'm after a decent book on how to use KDE written for an absolute non-techie newbie. Mandrake have some decent manuals, but they are somewhat overwhelming for my uncle - too much information.

I had a search on Amazon, and came up with nothing - no "big dummies guide" guide of book....

any ideas ?

I couldn't find a book quickly, but there's this FAQ I found:

http://www.kde.org/documentation/faq/index.html

and KDE has a helpcenter of its own.

Yes , I know about those. But my uncle would like to just have a handy reference to hand that he can read whilst AWAY from the computer.

The entire KDE desktop thing is completely new to him, so , taking a step back and reading something in a book could help.

Maybe if there isn't one, I should write one myself!
Would KDE.org have a problem with that???

hmm.. have you ever thought of getting him "slowly" adjusting to linux? you can make his kde look like win 90/2000/xp without big problems. just browse kde-look.org. and then, step by step, he will learn to change things the way HE wants them to be.

It's good to hear that you have go your unlce over to Linux. If you want something that he can read while hes AWAY from his computer you can maybe try printing the stuff that the other guys gave you?

Also if that doesn't sound like something you want to do you can maybe order some kind of book, and stop at a bookstore and try and get a book about KDE. Like Artic said you can stop over at http://www.kde-look.org and change they way that KDE looks so that it looks like windows, and then once your uncle starts to get more used to it he can start to change things until he's totally using kde with original kde looks.

Also once you start to have problems with installing stuff or something goes wrong you can stop at the Friendly FAQs they have really valuable infomation there. Hope this helps,

-Luis

I think something interesting would be what "Point&Click Linux" is going to be, but that's for SimplyMepis...

Mandrake 10 - The Definitive Guide.

I bought the one for 9.1. About half the book covers KDE and the apps.

The rest covers consol, filestructure, linux in general. Perfect book!

Around 500 pages in total, in a nice pocket-book size.

THANK YOU TOP DOG!

That is EXACTLY what i am after !!!

I honestly cant thank you enough - if i could get you a round of drinks , i would. Much obliged!


Somebody should tell Mandrake to start selling it in Amazon - that's where I started to look for something like that and i couldnt find it.

Thanks again Top Dog!!!

i thought of that - using win xp style themes and such like. But I thought - what the hell.. go for the deep plunge.

Having said that , it's KDE 3.2 as the default, with the crystal icon set and i set up the kicker, set up icons on the desktop, wrote a few readme files blah blah.


In fact, i DID ask him if he wanted it to be themed like windows and he said back - "why should i ? if i wanted that , i'd go back to XP - teach me something new that doesnt have this spyware,crashing and virus rubbish..."

He was a very frustrated Windows users - really cheesed off with it by the time i did the conversion. Having it look like windows would have been an utter turn off.

Believe me, he's had some severe virus and worm attacks, totally riddled by spyware and a horrible feeling of not being IN CONTROL of his system....

Rang me today - absolutely loving it at the moment. No complaints, but the usual questions (how to do this, how to do that - which is why i asked about a simple book about it). - one thing he's amazed about is the lack of crashing, the lack of pop-ups, the ability to run 50 apps at the same time without it affecting performance too much. Just an overall sense of "wow - I AM in control again.."

Amazing - i'll get him bash scripting in few weeks, mark my words.....

Thanks again TopDog for the link above...

What about the rest of us we tried to help too budd--yyy. And we don't get any thanks?

:(

-Luis

Here's another idea... though you may have already thought of this.

Set him up with the bookmark to these forums that he can just browse whenever he has some free time. I jumped into linux about 6 months ago, and still spend an hour or two a day just browsing the "today's active topics". It has taught me a lot, and I found that when I encountered a problem on my system I recalled reading something about it on these forums, came back and usually had the problem fixed in no time.

I don't think I would have gotten anywhere without the help of the people on these forums.

Hmm... try checking your local library (yes they still do exist ).

I checked out about 3 linux books and I found one solely dedicated to GNOME, but I'm pretty sure other might have KDE ones. Most of them are really old though and are based on old Red Hats like 5 - 7 at my library.

yup - done that already. his konqueror has tons of useful bookmarks.

i was after a book.

yup - checked out my library too.

1 very old Red Hat book, circa 2000. not much use.

You may have to eat those words... I'm going to the UK in a month or so...


Yes, but this way they probably make more money on the book. It didn't take that long to get it (5 days by FedEx), and I supported my favorite distro, so I'm happy

just bought the book. thanks.