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Re: Using Ubuntu when I'm used to Debian.



Mike McCarty wrote:

Hal Vaughan wrote:

On Tuesday 04 April 2006 18:15, kamaraju kusumanchi wrote:

Hal Vaughan wrote:

Every time someone suggests something
that makes an install easier or an easier config method, there is
always hostility in this group and elsewhere.


Do you have some examples?



I've seen and watched it. While it was more true several years ago than now, I've watched that kind of ugliness pop up from time to time.


It permeates the Linux[1] world.

[snip]

past 2 months. It didn't focus directly on user-friendliness, but it was a good example of the "I know hi-tech and you don't, so don't bother with Linux" attitude.


This has been a problem with UNIX[2] like operating systems from the
start. It has a cryptic command language, and many arcane facts
must be known in order properly to administer it. It breeds gurus
and guru mentality.

People who love UNIX almost universally hate operating systems with
a reasonable and well-thought out CLI, like VAX/VMS was.
The switches in VMS, if applicable, were the same for all
commands. The commands themselves were for the most part
complete words which made sense.

This contrasts markedly with the commands in UNIX,
each of which grew up in isolation from the others, and
which are usually only a couple of characters long. There
are those who love and thrive in that kind of chaos.

I am glad to see that the FSF has at last recognized that
one-letter switches instead of keyword-driven command line
parsing is a bad thing, and have started instituting common
and entire-word style options, like "--help" across the
board. This, at least, is a step forward and toward a
non-guru-only mentality.

[snip]

[1] TM Linus Torvald?
[2] TM AT&T

Mike

This will probably start a flame-war, which is not my intent, but...

Mike, let me start by saying I am NOT a guru.

I use linux, and I have done so for many years. I started using linux because it had the tools that I needed, and packaged them in a way that would work on the system that I was running at the time. I go through this list daily, but I don't post a lot. I post when I have a question, which, fortunatly, is not often. I don't post many answers since someone invariably beats me to the punch on the rare ocaission that I know the answer.

I won't deny that the attitude mentioned above exists. I have seen it, too. Sometimes it is warranted, frequently times it is not. But these people ar VOLUNTEERS. No one is paying the people on this list to answer questions. They do it because they want to. They take time out of their lives to answer other people's questions with no thought to remuneration. It seems like every time I see a post with your name on it, you are griping about linux, the way it works, or the 'attitude' of people on this list. Now I am sure that you make posts that do not fall into these categories, but these are the ones that stand out.

This leads me to ask: Why are YOU here? Why do YOU use linux? Why do YOU bother with this list? I ask because the ongoing theme in your post (the ones that I have read) seems to suggest that you really don't LIKE linux all that much, or the people who voluntarily help other people with their linux questions.

--
Marc Shapiro

No boom today. Boom tomorrow. There's always a boom tomorrow.
What?! Look, somebody's got to have some damn perspective around here.
Boom. Sooner or later ... boom!

- Susan Ivanova: B5 - Grail



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