Carlos C. Gonzalez [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > Hi Mark, > > Hmm.... You may have a point here too Mark. I guess I tend to view newbies > through the lens of my experience. Since I still consider myself a newbie. > I tend to read the documentation and do my own research and frankly > oftentimes I find that's it quicker for me to do that than post another > question. > > I find that 99.99 percent of my questions do not have ready answers found in > the FAQ's or by a search of Google Linux or the Gentoo forum. Many of my > questions come about as a result of having to work my way through holes left > in the Gentoo documentation or my relative inexperience with Linux.
-nod- I hope you didn't take my comments as a direct reflection on you. I don't know you, nor did I do even a cursory survey of the type of questions you ask. It was in reference to a specific (large) subgroup of users that I've observed over the last 9 or 10 years. > But I guess I have to concede that there are many newbies which just want > everything fed to them on a silver platter. I can't expect every newbie to > put in the time and the effort that I have to getting a Gentoo system up and > running and running reasonably well. -nod- Agreed. But that's also why we have easy to use distributions that don't require much thought and planning. ;-) As I mentioned elsewhere, when setting up systems where another admin might take over, I never use gentoo. I don't want to put undue burden on a company when it comes to finding a replacement. Finding someone to efficiently run a gentoo system is significantly more difficult than finding someone who can keep a redhat box running. > > > Something that seems contrary to the whole spirit of open source and GPL. > > > Namely choice. > > > > That's ridiculous. > > A bit strong here Mark :). I'll take it as an expression of your intense > feelings on the subject and not as a personal lambast of what I said. ;-) I apologize. I think it was actually just my being tired of people pulling out phrases like that all the time. Particularly since the spirit of open source/GPL really has nothing to do with choice, but rather with freedom. It might seem like semantics, but it really isn't. I swear that we need a Godwin's law equivelant for this type of argument. Also, after reading some of your other posts in this thread, I can read your arguments here in a better light. You're obviously more well reasoned than this original post would first suggest. I apologize for speaking otherwise. > Because I like Gentoo better for various reasons. Certainly nothing to do > with the hairy installation or hassles of configurating packages. More with > where Gentoo is going, the willingness of forum and list members to help out, > and the flexibility that Gentoo gives me in creating the kind of distribution > I want for myself or that I want to offer my customers. Keep in mind that there's a certain willingness of forum/list members to help out in part because they can have a reasonable expectation that you have /some/ idea what you are doing, or that if you don't that you're capable of doing some reading to get there. IOW, we don't have to have everything spelled out for us, we just need a push in the right direction from someone who has already been down the same path. > But I can see that there is also a responsibility to the Gentoo community that > I must keep in mind. How will my newbiesized documents affect the community? > Will it indeed cause a flood of spurious newbie questions? > > Not saying that I will stop creating better documents (for purposes of newbies > or those who don't want to re-try installing Gentoo twenty times). I'll have > to think about what you said. For sure. I don't think I'd ever suggest that having more documentation would be a bad thing. Honestly, a plethora of documentation only slightly lowers the barrier to entry. The users we should be concerned about never read documentation. > Glad to hear you think that Mark but I am not so sure that others in the > Gentoo community would agree with you. In regard to those using those > enhancements not being dummy's. Heh. I don't disagree. I've run into a fair number of people who take that attitude. There's people on both sides of that fence who feel like they can only choose one method of doing things. > I don't how many times I have heard statements to the effect of "well, it > works for me" also. As though that alone should make me realize that if I > was a more experienced Linux user the solutions to the problems would be > self-evident. Gurus tend to speak down to those who don't know as much as a > general rule I think. Precisely because they end up starting to know so much > that it starts to get to their heads. Hrm. Well, I can't speak to your specific situation, but it might be that those communicating that thought might actually be trying to help somewhat, albiet in a minimalist fashion. If you /know/ it works for other people, then there's a good chance it's something specific to you that's the problem. While it still /could/ be a bug in the software, it's more likely that it's something odd in your scenario. Of course, if they were really trying to help they'd give you a rundown of their pertinent config details too. ;-) > > You have the source, so you have all the choice you could possibly want, > > even within the gentoo space. If you really want the gentoo you're > > describing start another distro, and put it in there. I wish you the > > greatest success. I just don't want it to be this distribution. > > Understandable Mark. Like I said I will have to seriously consider how my > actions in creating easier to understand docs will affect the Gentoo > community as a whole. ;-) Just to reiterate, docs don't worry me. Any user willing to read the documentation is fine by me, even if they need easier docs than what gentoo has. > A lot of stuff to think about. Thanks for presenting what you did in a > logical manner. I appreciate that very much. It's helped me to understand > things that I previously had a tendency to label as guru hardheadedness or > snobbishness. And thanks for putting up with my occaisional lapses into conversational mode. -- Meeting, n.: "An assembly of computer experts coming together to decide what person or department not represented in the room must solve the problem." -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list
