Making things clearer - writing for dummies

Maybe something like this:

EDIT: and this:

How to Use PuTTY on Windows How to Use PuTTY on Windows
https://www.ssh.com/ssh/putty/windows/

I have a decent amount of knowledge in certain areas on IPFire, but in other areas, I’m very limited. I certainly see a large number of questions on here that I have no idea how to help, but in the areas I’m comfortable with, I jump in. That helps me have appreciation and patience with the newbie questions, even if I’ve been using IPFire for many years.

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26% of the installations says “We don’t care”…
No offense intended, just accepting numbers.

Edit: WHOA! What a full set of obsolete installations! Fireinfo never purge older data? (e.g two or more years of no contact) 44% of the setups are older than update 140.

I am curious where you saw this?

That might be your interpretation. I am not sure how you know all these different environments and what their needs are.

I am not sure who do you think you are offending, but it absolutely does not help anyone to have a comment like this on a number.

It’s from here: https://fireinfo.ipfire.org

This has been requested in the early days of this community , https://community.ipfire.org/t/announcements-and-other-news-on-top/215

IMO a problem is although that a search at Google or similar, most of the time finds threads of the old forum (which is not always bad of course) and links to the old wiki within. Unfortunately many links are broken there.

Hence posting here in the community is faster than reading or finding the correct information in the new wiki. For not advanced users, I fully agree, the wiki is not the best source anyway.

I myself use IPFire since 2015, writing my own documentation of my specific setup and have copied parts of threads of old and new forum to the docu, too. This helps me for a faster lookup and I’ve everything at one place.

I’m not a Linux pro but I’m not a noob either and have some more hardware with Linux running so I can help myself with many problems.

Other issues are most of the time very specific and I won’t find the answer not in any wiki article either, so I consult the Pros here…

Michael

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As you stated, much of the documentation is long and drawn out and providing short
and concise answers would most likely go a very long way for users to fix the
problems themselves.
Much of the problem is that many users are not formally trained in IT or
computer science. The jargon and unfamiliar terms can be very daunting and
hide the answer within the wording. There have been many times in
researching answers to a problem, it felt like I was working towards
a doctorates degree in Computer Science. In short, My recommendation
is to keep the jargon to a minimum. If jargon is used, provide a glossary
to provide a brief and concise explanation. I do agree that users need to
have a minimum level of competency in order to use the product.

Again, IPfire is a great product, and for me is very sucessful.

Thanks

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It’s not jargon when proper terms are used for describing networking, protocols, features, cryptography.
I don’t know what ChaCha20, Poly1305 are, but should be my concern to learn, understand, choose, not the documentation of IpFire.
Wiki and documentation should provide best practice, but nothing more. It’s not the Network Scrapbook for Beginners.

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Hi Michael,

First of all, I want to sincerely thank you for your and the work of the people involved in the IPFire project.

I get a certain amount of frustration from your post, so I would like to share my view of the wiki. Please do not understand it as a criticism, but as an opportunity to put yourself in someone who is not as experienced as you are.

I have been using IPFire for a few years in a private environment and have a technical background that is certainly not sufficient down to the last detail to make the best decision for all applications.
Since the switch to the new wiki, I’ve been extremely frustrated because I’m trying to find the relevant sections, but can’t find them. For my way of thinking, a table of contents, as it used to be shown on the left side, was crucial in order to keep the overview. I just can’t cope with the fact that you can click through to a relevant section at any time via dozens of cross-references. As far as I know, human information processing doesn’t work that way.

Only today did I notice that e.g. the page https://wiki.ipfire.org/networking is only accessible to me via the search. But you have to know that there is this page with basic information (!).

As I said, please do not understand this post as a criticism, you are doing a great job for a good product - only the wiki is well … nothing that I can commend.

many Greetings
Sören

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This would be a lot of work to cover all bases. I like it, but a lot of work.
How about at the minimum for all new people (and veterans), a help page is added for each top level menu/tab? Now what each help page contains may be simple text, may be a wiki page, may be just links to wiki pages. Keep it simple and flexible as things always change like all this DNS talk. Point people in the direction to start reading about the different menu selections.

Like this page?

Yes, I was thinking the same. We already have that. This shows that it is hard to find.

Dear Michael, dear IPFire comunity,
I am a Dummie. I am (unfortunately) Windows based user, who however were able to install Hackintosh to several Laptops without posting dummie questions in Hackintosh comunities. The only post there was “Thank you” to author who provided step by step install proceedure.

Now my second chalange is to built from my 10y old i5 quad core pc a router with Samba, VPN client paid service and download manager.

Im almost there unfortunately not with IPFire, which was for me the most “intuitive” firewall software from all 4 (IPFire, PfSense, OpenWRT, DDWRT) I considered. The problem was to configure VPN Client paid service, for which I didnt find clear Dummie step by step tutorial…

That said I think your wiki is great help for people.

The problem I faced was a VPN Client paid service (I think its called net-net).
I wish I have the same menu on IPFire like on ASUS router:

Step1 Upload *.ovpn file
Step2 Fill Username and Password.

and voila VPN works

To make User firendly intuitive VPNClient tab woud be great.
Samba was understandable however I couldnt get it work the way I needed.

Every from my 4 Firewall software a VPN Client require a lot of configurtion steps which varies from forum to forum from user to user and I didnt find proper guide on IPFire Wiki.
I have found it at the end on IPFire forum, but it does not work well for me and I really needed to get it to work so I looked elsewhere and now Im using something which was much mooooore comlplicated than IPFire but the pages has Great user manual and Guides and with them I was able to get it work (without asking)

From my 20y experience in various forum Communities I learned that Admin reaktions varied. Some of them didnt respond the questions which were already answered and deleted the dummie posts, Some of them patiently answered evrery questons, some of them posted 1 warning, that if comes another dummie question they will be banned… :slight_smile:

The way how you will treat Dummies is completly up to you.

I know how bothering dummies are. I hope I didnt bother you much with my post.
Just my 2cents

With all my respect to your work
C.

On the topic of VPN providers: There is a reason why this is not implemented and why people should not use it. IPFire provides plenty of tools that make it possible to use it (e.g. we have an OpenVPN implementation), but we have plenty of reasons why this is not implemented in the GUI.

I find it confusing that it is assumed that we “lack” this feature, when we very often deliberately do not implement things.

Should there be pages that explain how to still do it? Maybe, but not on the official wiki. I think it is too dangerous for too many people.

Heck, even if there was ONE link in the Web UI to the Table of Contents of the Wiki, that would be better than nothing, and much easier to implement.

Hello Michael,

Well I think You have a right to decide what will be implemented in gui and what wont be. And Im pretty sure that You and the whole non-dummie community have good reasons for that. I dont know what you meant by “Too dangerous for too many people”? VPN providers or OpenVPN protocol?

And even if whatever is dangerous, isnt it for everyone to decide?
You have no responsibility for how is ipFire used, right?
So still I dont see a reason why shouldnt be something implemented

Having said that I think ipFire is a great piece of Firewall software with great potencial. And im really sorry that I do not use it because of the reasons I already mentioned.

Have a great day
C.

2 posts were split to a new topic: Redesigning the configuration pages

Dear Michael,

thanks for your post. Here are some thoughts about what you told us.

As a first point, you said, you feel that nobody reads the wiki. Where does this feeling come from. From the experience and the frustration with the support of users? How did you measure how many people are reading the wiki?

For me, the wiki was my first place to go, when I started with ipfire and it is a good first place to go. You did a good job!

Second, you said, that the questions people ask do show, that they are not well trained in running a firewall. If you mean a person like me, you are right, but what do you say to me with your statement? Do you say: “Go away here! I will not give you my golden software because you are unable to understand it?” That will not be your goal. It should be the opposite.

People like me have no other chance to get trained by doing there first steps by using an free of charge open source firewall. So in your wiki and forum there will always be people, that are not well trained. All you have to do is making clear, at the first page of your wiki, what your supposed audience for the wiki is (people who know the basics about firewall) and where the others could find the basics about running a firewall.

Or you decide, that your wiki also should train people, and you then tell them the basic secrets about running a firewall. With this you would also have done some job in securing the internet.

It is your decision.

I have more thoughts about the wiki, but not enough time to write them down here.

A web or personal meeting would be better. I have seen that the ipfire team had made some meetings in the ruhr area. I life in the ruhr area and a personal meeting would be a good idea, if you life in the ruhr area as well.

Regards

Frank

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Good. So it does work!

No, you are not mistaken. It is absolutely right where this is not acceptable that people are running a computer network if there is no, or limited knowledge about the basics. We make people have a drivers licence and that is a good concept. Nobody is allowed to cut people’s hair unless they have done training. There are too many things to get wrong.

This all depends on what the risk is. Large companies are run like this and data breaches have become a daily scandal now. It is very often presented as “well, the hacker must have been really good” when in reality they don’t need to be that. Guessing “12345” as a password is not difficult.

In a home network things are different. This forum is mainly frequented by this type of user. I guess that is why we have a lot of simple questions here.

I am just getting frustrated when people don’t search for their answer first. It simply is the easiest option for everyone.

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Hello Michael,

your hairdresser example is a good one, because tomorrow i have an appointment with him.

To get you calm, I am not so bad trained as you might expect, but to me it is unclear, what exactly, from your point of view, is a well or enough trained employee. Does the knowledge about what a web proxy is belong to that? Or does knowing the difference between DNS over TLS and DNS over HTTPS also belong to that? What about IPS?

Your idea, to have a driving license for administering a firewall, is an interesting idea. But if you dig deeper into it you will come to the point, that you’ll need an army of well trained professionals to block any kind of attack. I.e. today you also need someone who is an expert in artificial intelligence, because attacks are run by using AI today.

But I agree with you, that it is not good, when networks are managed by untrained people, no matter if it’s an big worldwide companies- or a small home network. Many “hackable” home networks are a good start for a world spanning attack.

But I have no idea how one could get out of this Problem. The only idea is to have well government-financed schools for the home sector that train IT basics free of charge, so that you have a wide fundament of trained people.

In the company sector your idea of a “driving license” seems to be a good idea, at a first glance.

Regards

Frank