On Sat, Jan 17, 2004 at 05:02:59PM -0600, Mac McCaskie wrote: > > Monique Y. Herman wrote: > > >On 2004-01-17, Mac McCaskie penned:
> >That word "customer"; doesn't it imply that you paid for the product? > -No As has been repeatedly pointed out, but I think this point cannot be overemphasized. > >Anyhoo, your definition of adequate might be quite different from > >another user's definition. > -Very true, what is your target? Very experianced users with prior > knowledge or ? I think one needs to ask himself why he is using Debian, or Linux in any form. You have people administering servers, or other very intense professional usages. I think these people deserve serions attention. Then you have strictly hobbyist, or people who use it for personal use for whatever reasons. I fall into this category. I have asked some questions on this list. Some were answered and some were not. But I think that our questions are not as pressing as the first. Sure, we want to get our problems solved, but they are not as time-critical as that of the first group. And with that, I think we need to ask ourselves just what _is_ the nature of Linux. First off, it is provided by - as I understand it - pretty much people who provide their time with no recompense. I don't thinkt they _owe_ us anything. I appreciate what I get. After the break-in of the Debian servers recently, I thought about the countless man-hours spent in checking all the databases and verifying they were safe and then pretty promply getting them back online. A wonderful service - again, with no appreciable pay, AFAIK. But I see a tremendous number of questions (some of mine, maybe, too), that should have no need to be asked. They are really nothing but hand-holding questions. If the person asking _these_ questions is being paid to administer these computers, he's overpaid. But a lot of times, its someone who's never been exposed to anything but Windows and sees Linux and decides that this would be a nice play-pretty. These people don't have a clue as to what to do if you can't stick a CD into the drive and it automatically install the program hands-free. That just isn't the case. You don't take a four-year-old and set him behind the wheel of a car, then walk off and expect him to herd it down the road. But many people who don't have a clue expect to be able to download an ISO of some Linux distro, install it, and take of with no hurdles to cross. So the bottom line, as I see it, and it _is_ my opinion, I know, but Linux is not a toy. You need to have some previous experience with a CLI OS, or expect to advance somewhat slowly. You have a lot to learn, and these people _will_ help, but they don't owe it to us to do so. > >If there's a package that will solve a problem for me, I would rather > >have it available without any documentation at all than have it > >completely unavailable due to lack of documentation. > > -The third part puzzles me. How would you know how to use it without > some type of instructions. Actually, in _most_ cases, I've found that there's almost too much documentation. It's often rather technical, and sometimes at least as far up as my head can reach, if not a bit above it, but it's there. If not in a man page, often groups.google.com will turn up the answer to your question in rather full measure. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
