Re: Enough time wasted, moving on

[Harry Putnam <reader@newsguy.com>]

Manoj Srivastava <srivasta@debian.org> writes:

>  > All I hear from Woody is `can't won't or doesn't'  And this on a
>  > machine that has had 2 flavors of linux, 2 of the BSDs and Solaris
>  > (intel) install successfully.  Hardware recognized etc.
>
> 	I do have a hard time being patient with people maligning the
>  distribution, saying things about people being asleep at the switch,
>  while the problem was not with the project. 

The high traffic here is mostly about how well everything works. Its not
really dozens, even hundreds of `project problems' being discussed
here daily.  No one is finding any difficulties with the install
routines. And if they do, its probably their own doing, and not a
`project  problem'.  Right about here is where the water starts
running uphill.

You can keep right on with the `hard guy' routine, but I think its
only fair to warn you that my whole body is a weapon.  Hands
registered on 3 continents.  The last guy that called me a juvenile
banterer is pushing up daisies on a vacant lot in Chicago.  :-)

And you think `asleep at the switch' is too harsh....

I'm sure you will find none of that amusing:
But:
I've tried to detail some of the problems I had.  The one with the nic
was probably the most serious since it rules out any further install,
or at least with apt-get.

I'm clearly no expert, but then on the other hand I do have 5 yrs
experience with linux BSD and some unixes.  There are major holes in
my knowledge and skill base, partly because my education ended at 9th
grade.  And I've made a living the past 35 years as a heavy
construction worker.

But I think it would be fair to say, if I have lots of trouble with
an install, after installing one or another linux, bsd etc dozens of
times on at least 20 machine in the last 3 or so years. That there are
some actual problems there.  

I don't exaclty follow the reasoning I've seen presented as to why
there isn't a more developed probing mechanism in place.  Apparently
it is felt that isn't something to spend time on.  That may be true.
But, hardware finagling is really a pain in the butt.  My feeling is,
the more you put on the machine to do, the better it will be.

The thing about a crappy install routine is that once you succeed at
it, you quit worring about it, so it never again seems so important.
I'm having trouble now, remembering what was so hard.