YMMV, but MY Linux desktop stinks

On Thu, 2004-01-08 at 12:47, Chris Gehlker wrote:
> On Jan 8, 2004, at 11:12 AM, Craig White wrote:
>
> > On Thu, 2004-01-08 at 10:37, Chris Gehlker wrote:
> >> On Jan 8, 2004, at 9:25 AM, Craig White wrote:
> >> I thought Karl's original post was clearly made with the intent to be
> >> helpful. You keep trying to beat him up. Why is that? Did he shoot
> >> your
> >> dog?
> >>
> > ---
> > There were two opinions - Richard who wants to tell users to use SuSE,
> > Karl thinks Mandrake is the answer. I responded to both. I know I
> > didn't
> > say anything to 'beat him up'. Try my distro is nothing but a shot in
> > the dark.
>
> Maybe it was Richard. In any case, IIRC you speculated that if the
> original person did adopt his distro and later got into trouble, he
> would refuse to help. You also took him to task for not posting helpful
> messages in the past. I agree that you are one of the leaders here in
> posting helpful messages. That doesn't mean that others aren't trying
> to be helpful to the extent of their knowledge.
----
I never suggested that he would refuse to help. I pointed out that 'it
appears' that the numbers on this list support Debian, the most,
followed in descending order to Red Hat, Mandrake and SuSE. I don't see
much discussion of SuSE. Since SuSE uses a proprietary package for
system administration (YAST), the frame of reference for newbie Linux
users posting setup questions to this list isn't there for most of us.
Obviously this plays the other way with Richard since he is most
familiar with SuSE and YAST, his system toolset doesn't translate to
other Linux distro's.
----
> > Richard's idea of maintenance is Windows/Macintosh centric which is to
> > point and click it through and not have to dirty his mind via the
> > command line. It's clear why he prefers SuSE (YAST).
>
> I think that characterizes both Richard and the original poster. It's a
> valid preference. Just because we don't feel that way doesn't that it's
> not OK for others to feel differently.
----
I suppose that the insinuation in my comment is clear. The truth of the
matter is that much of the system administration can be handled on
virtually any Linux or BSD distro with webmin - much like SuSE's YAST.

The dark, dirty secret of Linux is that like UNIX, the GUI tools
distance the administrator (which on a home machine is also the user)
from understanding what is actually happening and what steps he can do
to fix his problems.

For example, let's say that you want to change the name of a computer in
Linux - or for that matter Windows 2000. I would no more want to fire up
YAST or in Red Hat - neat (network hardware administrator) that go to
the periodontist. From cli it takes me all of 20 seconds to edit
/etc/sysconfig/network and restart the network daemon. If I am uncertain
of what I am doing, I can cp /etc/syconfig/network
/etc/sysconfig/network.orig and have a backup before I edit. If I goof,
I can put the original back easily. This process extends itself easily
with all configuration files, they are simply text and I can even
comment the lines to myself. No hunting down
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE_\SYSTEM\CURRENT_CONTROL_SET\WINDOWS\NETWORK in the
registry.

So when it comes to helping others, I don't need to visualize YAST. If I
can have them locate the file, they can edit, restart necessary daemons
and move on.
----
> > In both cases, there is somewhat of a reliance upon 'plug and pray' -
> > hopefully there is enough proprietary drivers packaged inside the
> > distro
> > and sufficient auto-detection of the hardware for stuff to just work.
> > If
> > so, it may very well be a good choice. If not, then we have a problem.
>
> Exactly. Trying a different distro *may* provide a very easy solution
> to the problem. It costs little to perform the experiment. Both Richard
> and Karl reported that this approach had worked for them. What's wrong
> with them reporting that?
----
Here's one thing that's wrong with that. Newbie gets distro packaged in
book about Linux and installs it. Stumbles upon PLUG and says hey, I got
this older version of Linux in a book and can't get something to work
and asks for help. Answer, wipe it out and install this, it works
better. So now he has invested more time getting nowhere and it maybe
solves original problem, introduces a new problem and doesn't track with
the book that he has.

Perhaps he wanted to get familiar with Red Hat to prepare for using
Oracle and now, he has switched to SuSE because his nVidia card didn't
give him the depth or resolutions that he was looking for. Did we really
do this person a favor by switching him?
----
> I happen to agree that blindly trying different distros is not the
> optimum way to proceed. It just struck me as curious that your tone to
> Richard and Karl was harsher than your tone to the original troll.
----
tone is subjective - I'm avoiding the characterizations but you cannot
miss the base construct that I've been trying to make - that try my
distro is only the answer sometimes. It is like going to the doctor and
getting symptomatic treatment and not ever dealing with the root cause
of the problem in the first place. It allows the doctor to spend 5
minutes with the patient, write a prescription and bill the insurance
company.

OK Linux newbie...You want help getting Linux to work with your nVidia
card...get SuSE, it has more nVidia drivers built-in. Surely a whole lot
easier than telling the newbie how to download and install the drivers.
Surely a whole lot easier than telling the newbie that the reason those
drivers aren't included is because they aren't open source. Why bother a
newbie with the details of open source or non-open source when all they
want is for the stuff to work? Why? Because if you actually understood
the issues, it is precisely because it is open source and that is why
they are installing Linux.

Craig