My comment about that was: Quote:
but this one smacks of “You’re either with us; or you’re against us.” by one G. Bush, IIRC
Why? Your statement has a flavour of the Bush statement, where the options are limited to a binary choice, to avoid any complexity. A sort of “my way or the highway” tactic. If only you had simply advised him as you now claim; and left it there, instead of trying to justify the use of immature name-calling from a previous post.
I’m sorry that my suggestion smacks of George Bush. How dare I suggest filing bug reports.
I do resent being compared to G Bush. He was so many vile things. Secondly, I consider it an insult. Knock off the Bush remarks. Politics is not allowed on this forum, so unless your talking politics, then that leaves name calling which is a violation of forum rules IIRC. You should also note I never called the OP a troll, I only talked about the behavior and traits of a troll.
I don’t care whether he is with us or not. Just complaining on a forum wont fix the issue. This is where you missed my entire point. You say you didn’t. Obviously you did. I could care less whether he uses BeOS, Amiga, Mac, Windows, Clear Blue and Easy. Bottom line is, is he happy? If so…great. If not, then there is an issue that needs to be addressed. When mailing a letter, you know, the old fashioned way, you don’t send it just anywhere. You address it correctly. Same also works with email. But the same is true in getting issues resolved. You address it with the devs. Where are the devs? On the mailing list. That was my point. We are just other users at different experience levels. We volunteer our time and effort for each other. Complaining to us wont help.
Let me place my own experience here. When I 1st started(this was with Windows) I had to use a GUI for almost everything,then I got into going into files, folders & rewriting them.
Now that I’ve been with Linux, I still use GUI’s quite a bit,still have my habit(for good or ill)of going into files,folders & rewriting them.
I’m still CLI weak, I’ll use it but for now its a 3rd choice option.
But as we all know for now we have choices, for those who want Windows they got it, for who want Mac OS they got it, for those who want Linux we got choices of choices.
On the desktop I’m dubious that Linux will ever be a really serious threat to MSFT,the company will shrink in time by its own arrogance & errors.
Linux IMO stands it best chance on the smartphone & the apps for those devices.
Akoellh, I do understand what your saying. I have on quite a number of occasions given one line responses. But I also understand what MattB is saying.
Here is the issue. Some users are so new, they don’t know where to begin. Users like you and I have been doing this so long, it’s old hat and second nature to us. So we don’t even think about it. We tend to forget where we came from. How that we had lots of questions and frustrated a lot of people off as well. We forget that when searching on a new subject, it’s so new, they don’t even know where to begin. Where as to us, again, we’ve been doing it so long, we know exactly where.
We as experienced users need to remember our beginnings. Remember that sometimes when users get here, they have attempted a search and haven’t found anything, or at least anything that made sense to them. They can come here quite frustrated and subsequently uncooperative posts. Also keep in mind, that some users have no idea what to post. To them, 3-5 lines might be a lot. Or maybe they just don’t know how to articulate what they want to.
So us experienced users having an attitude like that is counter productive and drives users away.
Also keep in mind, a lot of inexperienced users like the GUI and feel threatened by the CLI. We as experienced users have the ability to simulate it ourselves. Since we can simulate it, possibly duplicate it, we can also get it via the CLI. Why make the user suffer if they don’t have to? Why lord our superiority over them? They came to us for help, remember?
Sorry to disappoint you there, but I still remember very well my start with linux.
It was in summer 2003, knoppix as a live CD for a few weeks and a pc magazine where it was included with some examples well explained.
Then SuSE 9.1 Personal as dual boot and hours of googling for problems, nearly always finding a solution quickly.
My first forum post for help was in may 2005 in a german linux forum, turned out to be a bug in HAL in 10.0 for external USB drives (low speed with certain mount options), got some good pointers, found a workaround for some other distro, applied it to my 10.0 and posted my solution, which was adopted by other users quickly.
There I decided to give back what I got from the community by reading their tutorial/threads/whatever.
Since then (end 2005) I am active in several fora mainly on the side of helpers and I still think i owe the community a lot and try to give that back.
lol. Fair enough. Yours wasn’t so long ago. Mine over 10 years ago when I got my start. I remember kernel 2.2.x and KDE 1.x. I remember Redhat 7.1 and using linuxconf. My memory is starting to dim now a days.
I never understand these cats who install openSUSE, but prefer Vista/XP, then log into this forum site and subtly put down linux while slyly promoting MS. Why the waste of time for them and to us? Why not remove linux and go back to MS entirely and save the comments for the MS forums?
That was about the first time I got in more or less passive contact with linux.
One of my best friends at university used linux (some SuSE 6.X I think) on some of their workstations, the thing I still remember, that I loved the name of his favorite editor (joe) and that it created sometimes files “deadjoe” (which it still does today IIRC).
I also remember that great idea with several virtual desktops (I think they used fvwm2 as their default, but I’m not sure on that), which was my first (after maybe having forgotten about it during my “windows years”) “wow, cool” impression with knoppix (3.6 IIRC with some early kde3) and also the first impression that the “linux desktop” looked a lot cooler and was a lot more customizable than that boring XP desktop without having to search and download for hours to get new themes/styles/etc.
That was it, I slowly but steadily switched to linux and in 2005 windows was blown comletely off the HD (which funny enough came back about 1.5 years ago, when I started playing around with virtual machines).
Maybe because there they bash “bloody bluescreening, spying on you, insecure VVinbl0wze!!!11ONEONE”?
But the funniest little creatures are the ones, who switch to linux, because then they “won’t have any more problem with virii, worms and trojans infecting their insecure by design system”.
True, but as in > 99% of all cases the PEBKAC, then they don’t get their OS destroyed by malware (which only got on their system, because they are just clueless how to configure windows) and so they have to go the more direct way by cutting out the “middlemen” and destroying their OS themselves (as they also don’t have a clue how to configure linux).
They are fscked in any way, because “then go back to Windows” is no solution.
Who knows, maybe the good sales for Macintosh are induced by linux in an intersting way nobody ever had the idea to put into it’s own statistics yet?
I didn’t hear about Joe until just about a year or two ago. I learned on vi I can remember the first time i did a linux install, and I’m looking at f-disk. This ain’t like no f-disk that I’ve ever seen! I didn’t understand all the hex codes and stuff at first. so I found a variation of f-disk called cfdisk. for whatever reason i found that easier to work with. then once i got my system installed, i had to recompile the kernel just to get my win modem to work. that was such a monstrosity i ended up calling tech support. i can remember going in to chat rooms trying to get some help and they would tell me to edit a file! i was so new i had to be hand-held and have them tell me which line and all that. bottom line is, i remember the frustration i went thru. but even with that, i still tend to get cranky, snobby, and arrogant and impatient. I tend to work real hard most of the time to control these feelings so that i can help people instead of drive them away.
As I see it, looking at a problem that has occurred which brought down the GUI, two of the most important things one will need to know when it comes to using the CLI to fix his problem(s) is 1) the directory structure and 2) basic CLI commands such as cp, mv, cat, rm and a CLI text editor like nano, vi, pico, etc. Reading and writing is the thing one does on a CLI so if you know how to do those and know your way around, you can probably fix the problem (if it isn’t too big for the novice). Often, the reason the GUI breaks down is because of an invalid or malformed configuration file somewhere. If one knows how to navigate its way through the directory structure and knows how to read, open, modify and write files, he’s gone a long way in increasing his chances of fixing said problem. Of course, this won’t guarantee he’ll fix it by himself as it depends on how big the problem is, among other things, but still the chance can increase. Even when the GUI is down, he still has a complete working system as opposed to on GUI-only systems when if something happens to the GUI, it totally trashes the system and more importantly, it does not offer you an option (a fallback) to try and fix it. Install an incorrect or buggy graphics driver on GUI-only system? Chances are it’ll BSOD with a cryptic message and that’s it. You don’t even have a CLI to login and try uninstalling the driver or reverting back to a default one which may bring back the GUI where you go on from there improving and fixing other things if needed.
Also, a further benefit is, is that if one does not know or understand a specific command and how to use it, you can read its documentation on the CLI. Virtually every CLI program offers a man page for you to read, you only need to type man <programname> and scroll up and down with the arrow keys. Often at the very bottom of man pages, there are links displayed to other CLI programs as either a hint or because it’s a similar one but differs in options/workings or because the program you’re reading the man page of depends on it
Basic knowledge of CLI can often be beneficial and save your day, esp on a system that at its core depends on CLI
Would not be the first time I was wrong. Although I think I understand based on several things you have written. You are one of the many very bright computer talented people that use Linux. Like many bright people you tend to be partly blind to normal human social interaction. You may even get affronted when people seem to act stupid. You might suffer from Aspergers, many computer liking individuals do.
However being bright and talented means you should be able to practice a degree of charity to those less fortunate than yourself. If you truly desire to help these lesser folks you need to think like them, for they are incapable of thinking like you. With that you should also realize that some of those people may have talents that you do not.
I do resent being compared to G Bush. He was so many vile things. Secondly, I consider it an insult. Knock off the Bush remarks.
With hindsight, I regret including the source of the quote, because the name has come to be associated with stupidity, and he probably didn’t write the speech anyway. Don’t fret over the name or who said it, as it’s the actual narrowing of choices to marginalize criticism, that gives the flavour I referred to.
then that leaves name calling which is a violation of forum rules IIRC. You should also note I never called the OP a troll, I only talked about the behavior and traits of a troll.
No it doesn’t leave that, but I’m glad you know the rules. Then “knock off” the troll references, they were directly aimed at the OP.
I don’t care whether he is with us or not. Just complaining on a forum wont fix the issue. This is where you missed my entire point. You say you didn’t.
I know you don’t care about that. If you did, you wouldn’t be fantasizing about trolls. I did not miss your point i.e. your advice. Save us the explanation, it’s been around the block many times.
The fact that openSUSE developers use mailing lists is evidence that they don’t just develop their stuff for their own personal use. We therefore know they are somewhat interested in feedback, well from within their own comfort zone at least. A few developers have replied to posts in the forum. Most users don’t use mailing lists, as they are an increasingly outdated technology. If the developers want feedback, recognize that their users use forums for it, and are proactive enough to use google to search for it, they should pick-up stuff from the forum. However, I fear the corporate nature of openSUSE development gets in the way of that, or just provides the tools which allow the devs to ignore the end-users.
I suspect that very few people really post in soapbox to influence the developers. Their real target is usually the fanboys/girls, and it usually works. :\
Now here we agree. Unfortunately most users do use forums, and most devs use mailing lists. Yes, I was and am aware that a few devs have responded to posts. All this does not make that post of mine a binary, my way or the highway, type post.
My simple acknowledgment and direction to essentially contact the devs was not wrong. I will not apologize for it. Sometimes there are binary choices. This was one of those times. Until more devs start hangin around here anyway.
My remarks about trolls, was not name calling, as I explained before. I simply defined the behavior. I broke no rules.
***********, why are you guys fighting in here? We’re talking about GUI vs CLI and both their strengths/weaknesses, but some of you guys go on arguing about crappy Bushes and superiority complexes lol!
btw, SUSE devs use IRC, all are in #opensuse-project, #opensuse-buildservice and some even in #suse and the suse kde/gnome channels
Meetings are held on regular basis in #opensuse-project and I sometimes have fun talking to AJ (Andread Jaeger) and harrassing him
PS: guess who proposed to him for YaST upon install to check what’s on the user’s HW and only activate the needed services (eg, no RAID found on system? no mdadm service enabled). Also I and M3PH pushed him to add support for updating packages and not only showing patches and accepting those (that was in the old updater though, the one that used “rug” ZMD but it got carried over to zypper)
On Mon, 19 Oct 2009 14:26:02 +0000, Jonathan R wrote:
> My remarks about trolls, was not name calling, as I explained before. I
> simply defined the behavior. I broke no rules.
Let’s make sure we stay not just within the letter of the rules, but the
spirit as well. Defining behaviour and then saying “if the shoe
fits” (or implying it) violates the spirit of the rules. We want to keep
things generally friendly here.
lol!Sorry “Legend” I didn’t realise it was your thread. This is soapbox, if you want to chat, there’s a special forum for that. rotfl!
On a serious note, keep up the good work on IRC, you must like a more controlled environment, and technology that replaced semaphore signalling but only just.
GUI vs CLI. Very subjective. Been debated for decades. GUI: more intuitive and simpler for new users. CLI: powerful command language, but learning curve, and is probably quicker eventually. However, inefficiency kicks in when you have to switch between them to complete a task.
Who cares, life’s too short to worry about it now.
Lost track there for a bit, hmm… was I in favor of the cli or was I fighting for a the gui centric view of the Cosmos? Here let me fire up a terminal and do a
On a serious note, keep up the good work on IRC, you must like a more controlled environment, and technology that replaced semaphore signalling but only just.
I use all kinds of communications. Forums, IRC, mailing lists (not the SUSE one though)
GUI vs CLI. Very subjective. Been debated for decades. GUI: more intuitive and simpler for new users. CLI: powerful command language, but learning curve, and is probably quicker eventually. However, inefficiency kicks in when you have to switch between them to complete a task.
Who cares, life’s too short to worry about it now.
Yep, I use both and I’ll argue it’s beneficial to get to know both or better said, get to know the CLI since GUI already gets slapped “in ur face™” when it comes to novices
Gee lot of phobia? I think someone is reaching a lot on these disorders. Hmm… from the assessment I have Gelotophobic tendencies with both a fear of and a need for laughter in social circles. I guess being the but of derision or the life of the party is rather subtle.
It never ceases to amaze the new conditions that they come up with. Perhaps Aversion therapy would work to correct. The kid on the Simpsons that points and goes Ha Ha may just have a good career ahead for him.
