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

From: Kent West (westk_at_acu.edu)
Date: 02/02/04

  • Next message: Adam Aube: "Re: bind vs. bind9" 
    Date: Mon, 02 Feb 2004 13:43:18 -0600
To: debian-user@lists.debian.org

    W. B. Maguire II wrote:

    > At 10:03 AM 2/2/04 -0700, you wrote:
    >
    >> On 2004-02-02, Uwe Dippel penned:
    >
    >
    >> > How about creating sub-topics ? Newbies, X, Kernel (2.6),
    >> > Applications, Advocating, General Discussion, Printing, you-name-it.
    >
    >
    >> 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!"

    Perhaps it is arrogant, but I agree with the person referred to above as
    "you" (Monique maybe?). Even experienced users might have a problem
    deciding which list to post to. For example, I'm printing to a network
    printer shared off an NT server; is my problem related to the printer
    driver, or to Samba setup, or to domain authentication, or to a
    firewalling network issue, or what? If I post to Debian-Printing, the
    person who knows that the answer is Samba-related may be the person who
    never hangs out on Debian-Printing. So not finding an answer on
    Debian-Printing, I either get frustrated and give up, or I cross-post to
    ten different Debian lists, increasing the noise on several lists, and
    making it harder to search the archives for answers.

    > *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!
    >
    This has been discussed many times in the past on this list; the general
    consensus is that although a Debian-Newbie list sounds good on first
    hearing of it, it would wind up being counter-productive. The reasoning
    can be found in the archives.

    > 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).
    >
    Sadly, it appears that no one knew the answer to your problem. This does
    sometimes happen. I for one have never even heard of a "Rocket-133
    PCI-IDE card", and wouldn't have the first suggestion for you. Thus, I
    kept quite.

    If you have on-board IDE controllers, you might try plugging your hard
    drive into that, just to see what results you get. I suspect that the
    Rocket-133 card simply isn't yet supported by the standard kernel
    drivers. Perhaps RedHat included third-party drivers. This is one of the
    advantages of using a consumer-oriented distro. Unless this driver is
    "Free", it's not going to show up in Debian, and if a Debian developer
    doesn't have this card, he's not likely to spend time/effort to develop
    a Free version of the driver.

    I understand it's frustrating for you, but as a general rule, the more
    rare that a piece of hardware is, the less likely it is to be supported.

    <snippage>

    > I'm hoping that if I have a problem [wiith Gentoo] 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).

    The purpose of this list is for users (experienced or newbies) to help
    users (experienced or newbies). Off-topic messages of general interest
    or opinions don't belong on this list, but we're all human, and
    sometimes OT threads (or sub-threads) get started; that's just human
    nature. After a while, participants in such threads will start getting
    flamed for not taking it off-list, and eventually the thread dies.

    > 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.

    We're all volunteers here. We'll provide help when we can, but when we
    can't, we can't. And sometimes, what looks like a request for help is
    really just the output of some Windows virus or spambot spewing garbage
    onto our list (like "My printer won't print. Why not?" as the complete
    text of the message), and most of us have learned to see through them
    and ignore them.

    > 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!

    I can't disagree with you here; there is a lot of volume (and noise) on
    this list. (I'm probably not helping the S/N ratio by posting this
    reply :-) .)

    >
    >
    >> 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.

    Okay, put another way, "just delete uninteresting threads, however your
    mailer allows you to do so".

    As an aside, I gave up Eudora several years ago in favor of Mozilla Mail
    (which allows threading of messages). You might want to look into it.
    (Not meaning to sound elitist; but when I started using IMAP, I found
    that Eudora wasn't as good a program as Mozilla Mail.)

    > 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! :-)
    >
    I think Gentoo will be a great experience for you; from what I hear it's
    an excellent distro. Of course, there are pros and cons to each distro.
    Debian's not for everyone (although it seems a lot of folks wind up with
    Debian as their final distro). Debian, and this list, are far from
    perfect. Don't misunderstand me that I'm saying you're wrong; I
    understand your frustration, and you're right about this list having a
    lot of volume, and not always providing answers (I've been frustrated
    several times over the years with problems that still aren't resolved).
    But again, we're all volunteers, doing what we can to help each other.
    If you had to pay for Debian, perhaps there'd be money to hire
    developers and support people to solve your problems. As it is, remember
    that if you use Debian, you're doing so because of the volunteer
    (non-payed) efforts of Debianites who have families to support and other
    issues in life that prevent them from running to solve one person's
    issues with a Rocket-133 card. 

    -- 
Kent
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