When I see an idea on Ubuntu Brainstorm suggesting some sort of popup when Ubuntu boots to teach new users about Ubuntu, I almost always vote it down. Why? I hate popups! Every operating system I have tried that pops something up has been incredibly annoying. Worse, the popup is rarely useful at all. I do recognize, however, the importance of informing new users about what they need to know to get started with Linux. This creates a dilemma. On one hand, I don’t want anything intrusive, but at the same time it would be good to teach new users.

While I was looking through today’s Linux news, I came across a post that might just solve the problem. The post pointed to a wallpaper full of terminal commands supposedly for beginners. OK, I don’t think that any newbie needs to know how to ping websites, but the idea is good.

What if when a Linux distribution first booted up it showed the standard wallpaper with some added text giving the user some information about the major differences between Linux and other operating systems and information about how to find additional help. The next time the user booted up, the text could be removed from the wallpaper.

I think this would be an unintrusive way of providing help and assistance to new Linux users.  What do you think of it? Would it bother you?

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