Understood, but even though I could identify myself as a gui and terminal user, neither term really describes my actual experience level.
My stance is that requests for assistance are using very specific and trying to use a general label is akin to trying to put a square peg in a round hole. I would rather help new users at their specific experience level whether that be experience with Linux or the specific issue they are having.
You can create a “New to Linux” category, which only “new to linux” group members can post new topics to. See Security tab within the category settings.
@new-to-linux group has post access.@everyone group has see + reply accessThat makes perfect sense though i’m not sure it applies at the edges.
I think someone who’s comfortable with even just a small part of Linux tends to have a massive advantage over new users in foundational and complementary skills that apply to everything else. Such as… somewhat knowing where Linux information is and grasping general concepts.
I think those new users are driven to describe that newness at length over and over because of how much the basics are usually taken for granted by people answering which is a VERY human thing to do.
It’s similar to how Windows users often take for granted how much they’ve absorbed about Windows to the point they think it’s inherently easy to use.
It’s an edge case that’s unintuitive and might be worth making it easier to convey.
This is just really valuable stuff to know in general, thank you @jjj12
^ this is the part i’m getting stuck on because there’s a few threads that get a lot of search engine foot traffic.
Having the questions posted in a “New to Linux” category would help solve that, great idea.
I’m not sure if it should a requirement that be in a “New to Linux” group though because it’d force them to have the title which should be optional and it increases the hoops they have to jump through.
What do you guys think about just having the category?
I know that when I was a new user I stuffed up a few distros trying to install Nvidia Drivers.
The general approach as a new Linux user is sometimes to Google for Nvidia installation, and find some guidelines that are ten years out of date. Copy and paste the commands and expect them to work.
I agree in part. My message was intended to say ‘meet the user where they are’. While I am not a beginner to linux, I am most definitely a beginner with BTRFS (and many other things linux related). Everyone is different and everyone is at a different point in their Linux journey. Meet them where they are, so to speak and the assistance will be better received, and less time will be wasted. This comes from me working in IT for almost 30 years.
I don’t understand the inhibition to search for troubleshooting information. Even if you are a windows user (especially if you are a windows user), you have to learn to search and troubleshoot or forever be dependent on someone else to fix your issues. I just can’t be that person. I just couldn’t use a computer and feel completely useless with not being able to fix any issues myself. That would prohibit me from depending on the computer. But, that is just my opinion.
The more I learn about Linux, the more I realize how windows is actually harder/more complicated.
In conclusion, it really is up the the requester to voice their experience level when they receive information they don’t understand. We should probably be discussing how to better interpret one’s experience level. I’m so glad that I don’t see any elitist RTFM crap here. There is not bigger turn-off to new Linux users than to hear that.
FWIW, the sheer number of results that type of issue is what led me to purchase an AMD video card. While this might not be the typical case, the only issue, if I can call it that, was finding a distro that used a new enough kernel version. Of course that was the issue back when I first got the card. These days many distro’s are using new kernels. My next issue, specific to me, was to find a distro that included everything to get vulkan working with my card. Instead of learning about all the in-and-outs about vulkan and what is needed to get it working, I just used a distro that had all of that all worked out - Garuda.
So, that was my way of working around that issue instead of having to learn everything about Mesa.
I’d much prefer a tag. Categories are limiting, while a tag can be used in any category (unless you restrict it in some way and only allow it in particular categories).
Something like a “New to Linux Questions” category doesn’t have the downside of context switching once a user tag changes so I think that should be done either way.
As for tags i’d probably want to hear from people who are new to Linux and currently using the forum if they’d find it useful and how much they’d want it for themselves.
So far i’ve seen 4 options which can be done alone or mixed.
(Credit to @jjj12 for making these possible)
Make it easy for users new to Linux to communicate exceptional and often unintuitive needs for answers that stick to the paradigm(s) they’re used to even if they’d normally be a bad or less than excellent answer. Bonus points for including the best solution below the one they need.
Also to extra-convey to that their questions are welcomed.
PM me or post below which ones you’d like for yourself.
The nicest part of this is allowing only group members to be the ones posting to the New to Linux category, while everyone else can reply as normal. That and a possible title. 
Wrench icon on top right of topic
Select the post(s)
“Move to”
Write up a new topic, which will auto-link to the existing topic: “How can the forum be improved?”
Is integration with Nextcloud something that has to be allowed on the discourse side? When I get redirected to https://forum.tuxdigital.com/user-api-key that’s the end and nothing else happens. I’d consider it an improvement to get this working haha
I don’t see anything under Settings or the API tabs that uses the word NextCloud.
From NextCloud,
“Discourse integration provides a dashboard widget displaying your important notifications and the ability to find topics and posts with Nextcloud’s unified search.”
Beyond that it’s hard to find information so i’m pretty lost on the context. Does this require the Network have a NextCloud in order to use this? Is it for 3rd-party NextCloud’s tying into the forum? Questions like that…
My Nextcloud should just pull in the normal notifications from Discourse that would be visible if I was visiting the site in a browser. It doesn’t require the Network to have Nextcloud. Thanks for looking into this, I’ve left a comment on a related Github issue for the Discord integration app.
If it’s something read-only and secure that sounds like a great idea, I just wouldn’t know where to start and it seems very hard to search for.
(edit:) I’d need someone to give me a guide.
Note that enabling the integration will then send 100% of your Nextcloud unified search queries to the authorized Discourse… always.
Your call, but not for me.
fwiw, I like monitoring the forum by RSS feed.
Easily one of Discourse’s coolest features. You can append .rss to almost any URL and .json works too.
Oooh, that’s not ideal but integrating RSS is easily done too.