Re: Debain on the rise ! - However ....

From: W. B. Maguire II (Maguire_at_AnalyticInvestments.com)
Date: 02/02/04

  • Next message: Jeffrey L. Taylor: "Re: Scary df output" 
    Date: Mon, 02 Feb 2004 11:32:48 -0700
To: debian-user@lists.debian.org

    At 10:03 AM 2/2/04 -0700, you wrote:
    >On 2004-02-02, Uwe Dippel penned:
    > > This was on Slashdot and this is what I see around me. Very good,
    > > applause !
    > >
    > > ... However, this list gets out of hands. With a few hundered posts
    > > per day; it's almost impossible to follow.

    Wow... I was *just* considering whether I should take the time to post a
    message before un-subscribing to the list. Since someone *else* brought-up
    the subject, I hope that my one, small opinion will be of help.

    > > How about creating sub-topics ? Newbies, X, Kernel (2.6),
    > > Applications, Advocating, General Discussion, Printing, you-name-it.
    > > I'd like to learn, share and give, but currently about 80-90 % of what
    > > I see is repetition, noise, shallow. Even clicking through
    > > (downloading) takes simply too much time.

    Yes! More discretization is definitely needed!

    >I think that genuine newbies who don't know how to find information in
    >the first place, and may not know which domain applies to their
    >particular problems, anyway, will end up posting to the "wrong" list
    >anyway, and getting flamed for it ... causing more noise ...

    Wrong, IMO! I think it is quite arrogant to dismiss a "newbie" list
    because of an attitude that "newbies would be too dumb to find it!" *I'm*
    a Debian newbie, and *I* spent the time to find-out which list I should use
    for help on installing the distro! Just because I'm a *Debian* newbie
    doesn't mean that I'm a complete idiot, and that there's no use trying to
    split-off a list for new users like me! Sheesh!

    And what about discretization in other areas? I asked a question about the
    Debian install (3.0 r1) not recognizing my HDDs connected to a Rocket-133
    PCI-IDE card (a few days ago---titled "New Debian install + Rocket133 = no
    HDDs! (Please help..."). I followed-up my first post with some details I
    forgot (like the version of Debian and the fact that I tried *all* the
    installs, starting with the 2.4 kernel). I included *lots* of detail---as
    much as I reasonably could. Please look! I spent a *long* time composing
    the e-mail, so that I could provide a reasonably-well-formed question. The
    result? I got *one* reply (thank you!), but it suggested: (1) use the
    "bf24" install---which I was already doing, and (2) build a new kernel for
    the install---an issue which I had addressed in my follow-up post
    (basically saying that I'd never compiled a kernel before, and even if I
    *did* compile a new kernel, I didn't know how to use *that* kernel for a
    Debian installation).

    The end result? The end result is unfortunate for Debian. I really *did*
    want to try Debian, but with the only response I got to my
    hour-long-researching-post being "compile your own kernel", that pretty
    much shut this new-comer down! So, I'm probably going to be using Gentoo
    instead. I don't know yet whether I can get the Gentoo install to work
    with my Rocket-133 raid disks (created with a Red Hat 9 install), but the
    documentation for Gentoo is very friendly, and I'm hoping that if I have a
    problem that I'll be able to get help---without my request for help getting
    drowned in a sea of 200 messages per day (and where many of the messages
    are just about general-interest or opinion topics---not experienced users
    helping new users). In the few days that I have been on this list, I can
    say that I have seen many, many requests for help go unanswered.

    Maybe I'll be able to give Debian a try at some point in the future, but at
    this point, it feels almost unsupported to me. I'm not saying that there's
    no help here, I'm just saying that the volume is *crushing*, and that it
    seems that many of the requests for help are being lost in the volume!

    >If there are many things you'd like to know about, why don't you post
    >and ask about them? No one is forcing you to read through all of the
    >myriad threads on this list. Just mark uninteresting threads "deleted"
    >and move on.
    >--
    >monique

    It sounds to me that you imply that anyone who doesn't have a good mail
    client just shouldn't bother with this list. I, myself, haven't had the
    time to migrate to Mutt on my RH9 Linux box, so I'm temporarily putting-up
    with Eudora on Win98 (even though I *hate* it and Windows!). Once again, I
    find your attitude elitist. Fine, maybe you and your *good* e-mail client
    can handle the volume on this list, but what about me and my
    *Windoze-average/crappy* e-mail client? If the new Linux user *must* run
    Mutt (or any other good Linux client) to post to this group, then the
    majority of new Linux users are excluded.

    Bruce.

    p.s. I'll stick-around for another day or so, to see the responses to this
    thread, but in the meantime I'm Gentoo-ing! :-) 

    --
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  • Next message: Jeffrey L. Taylor: "Re: Scary df output"

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