On Sunday 16 June 2002 11:05, Ben Rosenberg wrote:
If you wanna know why I don't use Slackware or Debian...it's this simple. I started getting into Linux w/ SuSE and I like it. I see no reason to change. Previous to that I was a user of OS/2 and NeXTStep...mainly OS/2 and if that wouldn't have gone away pretty much. I would still be using it. I
Well maybe that's part of the point. In the Linux world, 'newbie' means 'I've been managing systems for the last twenty-five years, and I thought maybe it was time to look at this, but there's a few wrinkles I can't quite iron out ...' Now some of what you're getting is people who have believed what they have heard about Linux being ready for the desktop. Which perhaps it is if you want to spend 20 hours a week RTFM. Most people don't. They don't have the time. And if they start to make the time - I have - they do not have the kind of basic knowledge that manuals take for granted. (When I had to do my first installation of a gizmo as root, I was so unsure of what it was that I should be doing that I took the dog for a walk five times in one day before I dared type out the necessary commands. And I don't even have a dog any more.) Then they find out that if they voice dissatisfaction, they are 'whining'. I hate that word - it's so damned condescending. Teachers use it about children in classrooms : usually, when you look hard and well, you find that there is something in the environment that is causing the children to act that way, and a good teacher can sort it out. Any road up, I don't whine ; I roar and throw hammers across the room. That's genetic : my grandfather used to do the same thing when he - a retired ship's engineer - was fixing the car. When I find odd things out about Suse - like the Samsung laser printer, here, advertised as Suse-ready, does not fix the way it says it should in the manual, or that the driver shipped with Suse 7.2 for the HP 850 only prints out garbage - then I am apt to throw a wobbly. (I know that it's going to take me three weeks to get it fixed - and that subsequently I will realize that it should have taken me five minutes). Unlike Grandad, I can't swear in Hindi but e-mail being what it is, I may find a second or two to vent my rage at some poor guy from SuSe. (Who do try. They tried to help me with the ADSL - which does *not* work the same way in France as it does in Germany, and so does not - by any means - work straight out of the box). But then I also throw wobblies about people who spell 'lose' with two 'o's Which, you see, is me. Which is the whole point. Best wishes Timothy Mason
--=====-- Tell me what you believe..I tell you what you should see. -DP
"Just because things exist doesn't mean you have to go round believing in them" (Granny Weatherwax)
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