What about help for non-technical Jolla Phone owners

idea

asked 2015-01-30 16:30:01 +0300

765 ●13 ●16 ●23

updated 2015-01-31 16:56:35 +0300

It's logical to assume that ultimately Jolla would like to have millions of owners/users and it's equally logical that the majority of these will be non-technical like me. On this basis, it would be a great advantage if there was a section of solutions with "non-geek" instructions so that we can easily make useful changes instead of having to wait, maybe years, for features and facilities that are currently standard on platforms other than Sailfish.

For example: in the SMS section there is a script for saving messages to a file but - for the un-initiated - no simple instruction about how to use it. (It's assumed that the reader has pre-knowledge or a degree of expertise in coding) I copied the text and pasted it to the [nemo@Jolla bin]$ (SSH link) and hit Enter. The output - pages of it - displayed on the screen but no file..! I'm pretty sure that something needs to be added to the script, but what? Many of us do not know Linux or Sailfish and are either too old or too busy to learn them but we are perfectly capable of following simple instructions.

Edit: to change title question so that technical wizards in the community will no longer be offended by my use of the term "geek" which, going by the Oxford English Dictionary, is mildly derogatory. I would like to point out that like many English words, it has evolved and has become a non-offending term in many environments in the English-speaking world. Perhaps I'm an English language geek!

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1

@DavidJ i think your title bring to misunderstanding. first i thought "he told non-geek, does it means that there is geek people here in together? what is his problem?" do you know what i mean? be geek or not geek bring often to a light discrimination.. Use skilled or not skilled, or newbie(maybe discriminiated too) instead.

cemoi71 ( 2015-01-31 11:10:34 +0300 )edit

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@cemoi71 chill... I'd love to be a geek but I have neither the skill nor the time and I'm too old to be a newbie. Let's not be pedantic about political correctness, life's too short!

DavidJ ( 2015-01-31 12:26:32 +0300 )edit

We all want the same just expressing it differently. :-)

lakutalo ( 2015-01-31 12:55:32 +0300 )edit

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@DavidJ I am not stressed or angry about you, but as lakutalo said, that is not really the appropriate expression.
And i repsect you older and your experience level.
i have a lot's of people in my environment wh has similar dificulties than you. I thinkyour request is a really serious theme, that the community should observe. that why i vote for it.
please don't mix the both things.we would appreciate that you use not skilled, than geek.
as i said use this term give the direction of your motivation an other way, that would not be appropriated. you may have an other term than skilled if you want..

cemoi71 ( 2015-01-31 13:10:15 +0300 )edit

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Regarding your example DavidJ, see this post; https://together.jolla.com/question/54249/how-to-saving-sms-text-conversations/

Perhaps you should get on that post, ask some questions, let the others know you're new to Sailfish and Linux, there are always those happy and ready to help, sometime a little wait is involved, not everyone lives online.

Regards,

Spam Hunter ( 2015-01-31 15:19:33 +0300 )edit

5

answered 2015-01-30 16:58:18 +0300

lakutalo

20555 ●168 ●261 ●264

updated 2015-01-30 20:41:43 +0300

As for the instructions, you could start writing a non-geek manual as a wiki entry. As such it could be improved and voted for by the community, which IMO does not consist only of geeks.

As for the enhancements you would like to have in the UI, just create a feature request for each. There are many fantastic suggestions to be found here, some of them already implemented.

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1

I never suggested that the community only consists of geeks, quite the opposite in fact. What I am alluding to is that there are many users like myself, of limited technical know-how, who have limited understanding of the jargon etc., associated with coding. I even had to look up "wiki" in the dictionary....!

Pre-smartphone days I had used Nokia phones for years then made the mistake of getting an iPhone. It was awful and I had to wait for a few months for a Nokia N8 to replace it. IMO the best smartphone of its day. The frustrating thing is that with this wonderful Jolla, I'm having to wait for cool features that I had become used to on the N8 and are standard on other platforms. If I was a coding expert, I could probably create all of the things that I would like but as I'm not, I'm depending on others.

DavidJ ( 2015-01-30 19:48:56 +0300 )edit

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Personally I love Jolla for its potential and possibilities rather than for its perfection. Because there you are right, a lot has to be done. One has to bear in mind that Nokia had almost 20 years of know-how and development behind when they released N8. Compared to that, Jolla has just come out. Think how long it took average consumers to buy a computer.
Feel encouraged as I do to contribute to a faster evolvement of usability. This way we do not have to wait for too long. For it is the community here that actually accelerates this otherwise tedious process.

lakutalo ( 2015-01-30 20:21:58 +0300 )edit

@lakutalo don't forget where Jolla came from... Nokia people!

DavidJ ( 2015-01-31 12:29:18 +0300 )edit

Right. Still it is not the same. It is a new product.

lakutalo ( 2015-01-31 12:40:11 +0300 )edit

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I too thought of writing a howoto (as wiki page) for some general advanced often needed tasks eg. running scripts etc. I'd surely be happy to extend pages like these.

Yo ( 2015-01-31 20:50:06 +0300 )edit

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answered 2015-01-31 10:58:23 +0300

bilgy_no1
7008 ●55 ●100 ●104

Yes please! Perhaps Jolla can provide a 'medium power user' app. This app would allow you to change all the cool UI/UX changes without having to go into shell/terminal. I would love to change the OOM threshold, or add a button to the browser bar, but cannot spend time to learn how to do this the technical way.

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@bilgy_no1 great idea but maybe longer term and let the techies tweak the basics in the short term, like voice guidance with Maps and fuller integration with Android apps.

DavidJ ( 2015-01-31 12:34:33 +0300 )edit

@bilgy_no1: Aggreed. That is why I try to contribute constructively with hopefully intuitive ideas and feature requests. @DavidJ: This is already available for android. Search for HERE maps.

lakutalo ( 2015-01-31 12:43:01 +0300 )edit

1

that medium power user app you are looking for is called patchmanager and can be found in openrepos

chemist ( 2015-01-31 14:46:42 +0300 )edit

@chemist Patch Manager has some cool stuff, but there are some issues with it an it's not official. Something tested and official from Jolla would be better.

bilgy_no1 ( 2015-01-31 16:28:26 +0300 )edit

@lakutalo I have already installed Google Play (thanks to excellent guide from @jjaone https://together.jolla.com/question/30926/howto-install-google-play/ ) and downloaded and installed Android version of Here Maps. Works very well but lose voice commands when connected by Bluetoth to car's handsfree system.

DavidJ ( 2015-01-31 17:06:22 +0300 )edit

@chemist Thanks for the information about Patch Manager. I'll have a look.

DavidJ ( 2015-01-31 17:18:53 +0300 )edit

@chemist I now have Patchmanager in Settings>System... it says "No patch available"... and Restart preloaded services is inactive... where do I go now?

DavidJ ( 2015-02-01 18:19:03 +0300 )edit

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answered 2015-01-31 14:53:08 +0300

chemist
41469 ●392 ●542 ●615

moderator

http://talk.maemo.org/

You may request to be non-geek friendly on any how-to tagged question, how-to should help people to get along with tasks involving measures they are not so familiar with. But please understand that people unwilling to google a manpage or read a one-page entry about CLI commands might still be lost as some things just fail on the first attempt and you need to know some stuff about parsing on the CLI to get results/debug or even ask the right question. People who may not be able to follow instructions because they do not know how to edit a file should consider google for asking that question. If you want to lay back and wait for an UI to do those tasks you need to be patient and live with the circumstances for now.

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@chemist Thanks again. I do understand what you mean. It's really a question of how important something is at a given time and whether or not there is time to do the necessary research. In my case, I'm simply a user and perhaps my expectations were too high when I purchased my Jolla (or their marketing was too good!) but I have limited time to experiment and the knowledge gained in sorting out a problem will probably be forgotten before the arrival of the next issue, because I'm not a developer and therefore not using these skills on a continuing basis.

DavidJ ( 2015-01-31 17:32:14 +0300 )edit

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answered 2015-03-04 20:15:45 +0300

mariner
1727 ●27 ●45 ●46

I consider myself a technical user. I have been working with computers since the first PCs and microprocessors, but I grew out of writing software. I want an easy to use Linux experience as I have long since forgotten the basics of Unix and find getting detailed info on the various flavours of Linux too time consuming. I am probably a Geek, but I do not have current detailed knowledge of Linux and I need some sort of manual which tells me easily how to do things which are definitely not non-technical especially security, privacy firewall configuarion etc.

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