sarah31 Posted July 20, 2004 Report Share Posted July 20, 2004 Mu only complaint is that the community built around it (in my experience) can be a little bit elitist and not very helpful - not always I've had some great help form some of the guys on their forum, but often "archers" seem to not actually want anyone else to use their distro so that can keep it small and how they like it - I don't know why, insecurity maybe ;) i would be one of those. but i don't consider myself "elitist" i just don't want arch to become loaded with gui interfaces for simple apps such as pacman. it is not that dislike guis but the more of them that you have hiding the "dirty underbelly" of linux the more people will require help. i am a firm believer that anyone using a computer, regardless of what OS, they should know the basics of their system. i know that is a bit idealistic but if you hang out in forums enough it get very annoying to see the same questions asked over and over when at least familiarizing themselves with website docs, man, and info pages they could have had their answers. i'm as lazy as the next person but i still am able to find most of my answers on my own and this is because i know some basics and i know what is in my computer, hardware-wise. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tyme Posted July 20, 2004 Report Share Posted July 20, 2004 i would be one of those. but i don't consider myself "elitist" i just don't want arch to become loaded with gui interfaces for simple apps such as pacman. that's a choice that the developers should make, if they want arch to stay the way it is it will. if they let the users majorly influence them, and decide to change, that's their choice. i know that is a bit idealistic but if you hang out in forums enough it get very annoying to see the same questions asked over and over when at least familiarizing themselves with website docs, man, and info pages they could have had their answers. It can get annoying, and yes users should familiarize themselves. But there will always be a new user who won't be familiar with these tools and will need a little help to get used to how to use them. That's why I do my best to explain how I found an answer to someones problem so that they can see the process and hopefully follow it next time they have an issue. Don't just help them, teach them...I think this board attempts to follow that idea. People become elitist when they stop teaching users, and only care about helping those who taught themselves. I taught myself much of what I know, and I made a lot of mistakes and wasted a lot of time (the first time I installed gentoo - my first non-rpm distro experience - it took me 5 tries and 3 days - only to realize all i needed was devfs support). I'd rather teach some other user from my mistakes so that they don't have to go through that. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
phunni Posted July 20, 2004 Report Share Posted July 20, 2004 (edited) I have to say that one of things I like about arch is the lack of "bloat" - which probably is at least partly due to a smaller user base. That said - we were all newbie's once (some of us still are!) and should not shy away from helping people. People that come to a distro like arch and have questions are actually those that will end up knowing the basics of their system, so it's actually productive to help them. As tyme says - the development of arch is up to the developers. If someone want to develop a pacman gui - fine, but no-one says it has to be included in the pacman packages. Edited July 21, 2004 by phunni Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SwiftDeath Posted July 21, 2004 Report Share Posted July 21, 2004 Hmmm. I think'll I'll stick with gentoo for my next distro. And tyme is right, no matter how dumb they are, we need to point them in the right direction. Or they'll never use linux. Thats the bottom line. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SoulSe Posted July 21, 2004 Author Report Share Posted July 21, 2004 Arch is a better distro to move to after Mandrake and before tackling Gentoo, Debian or Slackware IMHO. It is easier to install and will also teach you more about Linux in general. And if the developers or the public decide to make a pacman gui, etc. so what? Nobody is forcing you to install it. Linux = choice. So use yours. If you wanted to, you could run Mandrake from the CLI and ignore X and guis completely... same with any distro. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sarah31 Posted July 22, 2004 Report Share Posted July 22, 2004 (edited) i know i am free to not use something but i am also free not to help people that are just too lazy to try and figure things out for themself. i was left out to dry many times. until i finally started to take initiative and actually want to learn then things changed. anyone that knows me knows that i will help anyone. but if someone takes takes takes and makes the community do all the work i have no time for. i was taught right from before i even delved into linux that if you don't want to get your hands dirty then you should stick with windows or mac os. as time has gone on i have come to the realization that the less someone knows their system and their OS the more it will cost them in time and money. the more hand holding we do the more people will demand it. the more we make things point and click the more we compromise the security of our systems .... some things in *nix are just not meant to be done without considerable risks. Edited July 22, 2004 by sarah31 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest anon Posted July 22, 2004 Report Share Posted July 22, 2004 sarah31 but i am also free not to help people that are just too lazy to try and figure things out for themself. Its all very well to say "you don't want to help people who are too lazy to learn", and i have some sympathy with that view myself. The problem is unless you actually know the person, how can you be sure their being lazy? Tech help forums usually have people from all over the world. Maybe because of their native language they have great difficulty finding there way around to look for the answer? Maybe they have "learning difficulties" or it just takes them longer to "get there" You just can't assume someone is lazy because they ask a question which has an obvious or easy to find answer. It might be true, but lets give them the benifit of doubt until we know them better eh? Try and keep that Cynicism at bay ;) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Darkelve Posted July 22, 2004 Report Share Posted July 22, 2004 sarah31 You just can't assume someone is lazy because they ask a question which has an obvious or easy to find answer. It might be true, but lets give them the benifit of doubt until we know them better eh? Try and keep that Cynicism at bay ;) <{POST_SNAPBACK}> You mean you are giving me the benefit of the doubt, anon? ;) but seriously, I think it is really important to help people get through their first few months of Linux... what they cannot contribute at this time, they might make up for it later... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SoulSe Posted July 22, 2004 Author Report Share Posted July 22, 2004 I agree with sarah31 to a certain extent; you all know how much I hate freeloading and people who abuse boards and the people who give of the valuable time to help are also guilty of this. But as anon said, how can you be sure what their intentions are? I am getting a bit sick of seeing n00bs ask questions like 'how do I play Windows games in Linux' when we've had a few hundred threads about WineX/Cedega. Now that's lazy. Sarah is right - if you don't want to get your hands dirty, stay away from Linux. BUT, Mandrake provides us with a solution to this, being a user friendly distro (in some ways even easier to install and use than Windows). Back to Arch though; I see it as a great distro to ween n00bs off of Mandrake etc., IF they feel that they would like to learn more about Linux. It is easier to install than Gentoo or Slack, etc. and it is far more flexible than Fedora or Mandrake (in some ways). Now - when a distro like Arch emerges, it attracts attention from people like those wishing to further their knowledge of Linux and you have to take the rough with the smooth. In this case it means helping people and in so doing promoting the distro you believe in. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gowator Posted July 22, 2004 Report Share Posted July 22, 2004 This is a hard subject but although Im all for giving people the benfit of the doubt acting like a nanny and wiping their **** so they dont have to touch it themselves is not helping either. I used to work with some very elistist Austrians, the worse of which was a Hapsburg ! He was a nasty person anyway but he was also a product of having his butt wiped for him (possibly literally) for his whole life. I could never quite work out if he was terminally lazy or what... but he couldnt change a lightbulb (literally not figuratively) becuase he had been brought up with servants to do that sort of work. He once asked a friend to help him change a wheel and then proceeded to watch Garth change the wheel... I doubt he had any intention of ever getting dirty hands... So on this I dont really agree that mandrake offers a chance to run linux without getting dirty hands... In fact for this I'd say Knoppix live or Linspire are better... and probably Suse too. If you just want a magically working system with OO and a browser and mail client then Mandrake isnt it.... To me the best part of Mandrake is urpmi.... but by definition almost these people dont want any other software... or learn what going on. Some of these people are genuinely interested, others are perhaps genuinely afraid of computers but many are just too lazy .... I dont mind reading the man pages and 'translating' into plain english but I do object to people who won't even try. Many of these are like they guy with the flat tyre or me trying to avoid learning how to peel potatoes as a kid so I wasnt asked to do one less chore! when I was in active support at work I used to have urgent requests.... like Oh this must be loaded today.... often this was a load of bull nad instead of giving the job to one of my staff I'd say we were too busy but since it was so important Id do it myself!! then the killer... come back at 6:30 PM and we'll load it.... 90% of the time it turned out it wasnt so urgent.... 10% I ended up working late! but in the end those I helped appreciated it and those I didnt stopped asking becuase they knew I wasnt going to do it all for them. Helping someone to get into linux gently is one thing.... ass wiping another....and it does no favours to them or linux. We can only show them the door as Morpheus would no doubt say :D Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
phunni Posted July 22, 2004 Report Share Posted July 22, 2004 People who are completely new to linux may also be competely new to forums and communities like this one - I know I was... It sometimes takes a little while to figure out how things work - and doesn't necessarily mean laziness. One of the first posts I made on another forum was a question that had, apparently, been answered several times. The person replying to my post told me this and asked me to use the search feature. I did this and could not find any solution for ages - I would have given up long before I did had I not been told that the answer was somewhere. In that context a simple "use the search feature" wasn't helpful really, a link might not have hurt if the poster knew where the answer was. If the answer had been buried, as seemed to be the case, then a new post on the topic might have been helpful Plus many noobs might often believe that their question is a stupid one (even if it isn't at all) and therefore assume that no-one else would be dumb enough to ask it. This can include things that may seem to the rest of us to clearly be an faq - like how do I play my windows games on linux... One of the things I used to love abou this forum was that no-one cared if their were multiple posts - everyone was too chilled out for that. I'm not saying that we need to answer every question a hundred times - but just post a link to a thread and relax about it - making it an issue tends to create a noobie unfriendly atmosphere - a potentially fatal thing in a forum designed to help people... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
spiedra Posted July 22, 2004 Report Share Posted July 22, 2004 (edited) Also, noob's may not know the resources to search for answers. Before Linux, I didn't know much about google. On the old, old MUB, no faq's or Tip and Tricks. I think this bored has done the best it can by offering noob's faq's, Tip and Tricks, rules to go by before posting questions. So to say someone is lazy for asking what's obvious to us, a frequently asked question, we can't assume they are asking because they are lazy and a forum is available to help people and if a noob asks a repeated question, we answer it, we teach them, we tell them about how to use resources available to them to find answers. If the aim is to help Linux overtake MS, become mainstream, then we need to help people. For the most part, I trust they do research before deciding they want to tame Linux so I don't believe they want us to do everything for them inclluding wiping their asses. Edited July 22, 2004 by spiedra Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest anon Posted July 22, 2004 Report Share Posted July 22, 2004 People who are completely new to linux may also be competely new to forums and communities like this one - I know I was...It sometimes takes a little while to figure out how things work - and doesn't necessarily mean laziness. One of the first posts I made on another forum was a question that had, apparently, been answered several times. The person replying to my post told me this and asked me to use the search feature. I did this and could not find any solution for ages - I would have given up long before I did had I not been told that the answer was somewhere. In that context a simple "use the search feature" wasn't helpful really, a link might not have hurt if the poster knew where the answer was. If the answer had been buried, as seemed to be the case, then a new post on the topic might have been helpful Plus many noobs might often believe that their question is a stupid one (even if it isn't at all) and therefore assume that no-one else would be dumb enough to ask it. This can include things that may seem to the rest of us to clearly be an faq - like how do I play my windows games on linux... One of the things I used to love abou this forum was that no-one cared if their were multiple posts - everyone was too chilled out for that. I'm not saying that we need to answer every question a hundred times - but just post a link to a thread and relax about it - making it an issue tends to create a noobie unfriendly atmosphere - a potentially fatal thing in a forum designed to help people... <{POST_SNAPBACK}> A very good reply from a Friendly Englishman Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tyme Posted July 22, 2004 Report Share Posted July 22, 2004 we're talking about arch linux, right? ;) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SwiftDeath Posted July 23, 2004 Report Share Posted July 23, 2004 Tyme is right. Were getting way off-topic. Anyways I heard Arch and Gentoo are the fastest. And if your suggesting I should try Arch next, I probably will on my free box (mohaa game server). Maybe even speed it up a bit OOOoOOo. I don't see the point in learning debian or slackware when gentoo and arch are faster. So far I'm having trouble seeing Gentoo's advantage over Arch (too many really good comments). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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