On Tue, Jun 7, 2011 at 2:07 PM, Alan McKinnon <[email protected]> wrote: > Apparently, though unproven, at 22:51 on Tuesday 07 June 2011, Mark Knecht did > opine thusly: > >> On Tue, Jun 7, 2011 at 1:33 PM, Alan McKinnon <[email protected]> >> wrote: <SNIP> >> >> >> #370295 >> > >> > Zac responded (comment #21) to my post in that bug with quite a >> > well-reasoned rationale. It makes interesting reading. >> >> It was a good response. >> >> One question left hanging for me goes like this: >> >> I understand nano is a choice. Removing an editor like nano is 99.99% >> safe. There's no way removing nano is going to cause a system to not >> boot or be unable to do updates, so I remove it understanding (now) >> about virtuals. On the other hand how does someone who's not educated >> in booting or the internals of portage know that removing less >> wouldn't cause a problem that stops a machine from booting or makes it >> impossible to do updates? > > There is always an expectation of the minimum understanding needed to be able > to use a technical product at all. The use of less and what to do if you don't > have it falls fair and square into the "you really should already know that to > use Gentoo" category. > > This isn't elitist, it's a technical fact. You have to set the bar somewhere > and there's nothing wrong with that.
Hi Alan, While I agree about setting the bar somewhere I think you sidestep answering the real question. I have no problem with saying someone needs to understand what less does. less isn't important. It's just the example at hand today. The 'problem' that I'm trying to get closer to answering is how does anyone other than a Gentoo dev, assuming some reasonable amount of effort, know that less isn't called by some script somewhere during the init process? How does one come to understand that maybe less is just as import as python is to the emerge process? (and I know it isn't...) What I didn't like about this issue popping up yesterday is that it altered the idea that average users never touch anything in @system. Iin fact, TTBOMK I've never in 11 or 12 years of running Gentoo ever done an emerge -C on a @system package until this morning when I removed nano. Again, I don't disagree at all with your comments. - Mark
