Newbies input

[undisclosed]

Greetings,
I am a Linux newbie going on five years.
You might be asking yourself, how can this guy
consider himself to be a newbie?
Let me tell you why.  First off, I know how to install
the various Linux distros, I know what Lilo and Grub
are, I also know what KDE and Gnome are.

There are various applications that I have learned to
use(Samba....ok just Samba).  I use a few programs
like Xine or Gimp but not much else.  I know a few
console commands, and I can install some programs that
I download.

I have a few books on different Linux distros and a
book on Samba. 

Those are the few things I know, everything else is a
mystery!  At this time I do not have a server, and
dont need to know anything about servers or
programming or SQL, Oracle or anything like that.

I do want to know how to streamline my kernel for the
best performance and so it takes up as little space as
possible.  I want to have a better if not expert
understanding of the base system and KDE(I need the
GUI). I am not book smart, I need someone to stand
over my shoulder pointing out mistakes that I'm making
and explaining why. I'm not a daring person, I'm
afraid of making a disaster out of a small problem
because I don't know what I'm doing.

I started going to the kclug because I needed people
smarter than myself to fix my problems and show me how
to fix it myself next time it happens.

Kclug was my last hope, I tried chatrooms and other
lists but the people there either didn't know how to
fix my problem or didn't care.  I know people who have
had a windows machine since win95 and they still don't
know how use the system!  I understand that it takes
effort on my part if I am the one wanting to make the
switch to Linux, but I would probably not have made
the switch at all if it hadn't been for those who told
me that Linux is so great and Linux groups are so
great.

No offense, but don't hand a CD to someone if you
don't plan to hold there hand(if they need it) when
they decide to take your advice and make the jump over
to Linux.  Linux is a big shock to a windows user.

I also have a problem with people who tell me that
"Maybe Linux is not for You!"  When I first got Linux
I was being told it was for everybody, now that I'm
have difficulties understanding it I'm being told
something else!  Sounds to me like they don't want to
take responsibility for getting me into this mess.

I beleive that Linux is for me because I choose it to
be, I also beleive I will need help along the way.
If kclug is considered a social gathering, I'm ok with
that. I don't want to change what it was meant to be
but maybe the kclug website should state that it is a
social and not an educational gathering so newbies
will look else where for learning.

I know I'm not the only one who has had a hard time
figuring these Linux thing out but I am one of very
few who would honestly confess it.

Long Live Linux,

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