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10 things to do after installing Linux
40hz:
Note: I really hate giving the "Linux isn't for you" speech, I've heard it several times myself from some elitist doucherocket it some Linux chatroom who's there to troll, not help, but at some point, with a user lacking a certain level of experience, and/or amount of time, it is simply the case.
-Ehtyar (October 20, 2009, 04:24 PM)
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Well...that's pretty much what the Macintosh crowd says about OSX, so I guess it's not the first time somebody's made that argument.
And maybe it's just me...but...I still can't see how being told to "piss off" by someone who 'genuinely cares' is any more helpful (or less hurtful) than hearing it from "some elitist doucherocket in some Linux chatroom who's there to troll..." Both hurt the cause - and neither advances the goal.
Perhaps I see things differently because I'm in the tech support business. I firmly believe that anything that is an ongoing problem for the average user is indicative of a fundamental design flaw in the system rather than a personal failing on the part of the user.
According to Uncle 40Hz's Rainy Day Fun Book of System Design: In any well-designed system, an exception to the rule must always be the exception - not the rule.
Ian Fleming said it even better. When he worked for the Britain's Naval Intelligence during the war, he said there was a saying about how to classify a reported incident. It ran something like: Once is chance. Twice is happenstance. But three times is enemy action!
Bingo! Beneath the chuckle is a brilliant insight. It's not the problem itself - it's the repeatability that's important. Every system - good or bad -will experience problems. The key difference is that a bad system will experience the same problems over and over.
I've since adapted that concept for my own use. The 'suitable for family viewing' version goes something like this:
If I'm clobbered by something once; or I hear two different people complain about the same thing; or one person runs into the same hassle on three separate occasions - it's a problem that needs fixing on the system level.
Just my 2ยข :)
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Addendum:
The fact that certain cards can be cajoled into working with Linux has no bearing on my earlier point about suggesting that one of the big distros should consider manufacturing a NIX friendly wifi card. It's an action primarily directed at breaking the stalemate with wifi card manufacturers.
I was at a meeting about a year ago with one of the big network device manufacturers. I eventually wound up speaking to one of their senior engineers about why they didn't offer a native Linux driver. He said there were no technical reasons why they couldn't. (He even went so far as to characterize developing a native Linux driver as "a summer intern programming project.") He said the real reason was that his company wanted to minimize its tech support costs - so it had an official policy of not supporting any OS other than Windows in order to cut down on the number of support calls received.
Now, if whoever made a NIX friendly card just supplied drivers for Linux, it wouldn't change anything. But if their competitively priced card also shipped with Windows drivers, that would "drop an alligator across the transom" since it would now be in direct competition. If a buyer had a choice between a NIC that supported both operating systems, as opposed to only Windows, the more versatile card would have a distinct market advantage as long as its price and reliability remained competitive. And with the low cost of mass producing electronics, that shouldn't pose a problem.
Kodak did the same thing when the DX Camera Autosensing Codes (CAS) came out for 35mm film. Kodak wanted all cameras to use the CAS feature. Since that would require a reader be built into the camera itself, most of the big camera manufacturers were reluctant (citing costs) to do so. Kodak countered by saying that Kodak was absolutely committed to the DX standard, and while Kodak hadn't manufactured a camera since they stopped producing their landmark Brownie camera many years before - there was absolutely nothing stopping them from doing so if that's what it would take to hurry the adoption of CAS along.
Needless to say, that was all it took to get everybody else onboard. 8)
Paul Keith:
And maybe it's just me...but...I still can't see how being told to "piss off" by someone who 'genuinely cares' is any more helpful (or less hurtful) than hearing it from "some elitist doucherocket in some Linux chatroom who's there to troll..." Both hurt the cause - and neither advances the goal.
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It depends on the goal.
For example, I would often add the phrase: "I can't speak for the other guy"
--- but if this were me, I would say the comment because it would pursue the goal of sending to the other guy that I considered both my and their plight and that there just too much current going against the alternative right now that you're better off not opting for Linux because even if you get passed this, you most likely won't get past the other problems with the same ease. (and this ease is already a headache)
It wouldn't have been necessary for me to say "I can't speak..." because I already added "if this were me" but maybe because of the model of politeness and also because I want to add some gravity to my comments compared to a troll, I would add these words in order to pursue a goal that I cared more than your average troll.
Of course, at the same time, this is really a bad example because I'm on the other side of the fence. I'm not a Linux expert, I'm a PC newbie that's trying to get into Linux but also barely touches it because of issues like these. (In fact, my original reply before deciding not to post it was to seriously state that I was expecting the topic to be about which Linux howto books to buy and have on hand instead of these more obvious stuff in the article)
End of the day, Ehtyar can speak for himself on why he chose to phrase things like this but I'm just saying my own 2 cents here because it's reminiscent of your addendum 40hz but at the same time, maybe because this is a forum post, and not a world wide company changing situation, you might not have noticed the similarity of the problems of how convenience, motive and "what's in it for me" can do to form one's goal and cause.
It's useless from a community goal because I can't touch both of you guys with regards to your tech/company knowledge and experience with this community but from the pursuit of a better documentation that is not based on technical level but is like a Linux master writing a free kid's howto book instead of what they perceive as the ultimate documentation in details and clarity to their audience, there's some notability in focusing on both of your 2 cents post.
It's also related to the topic because one must wonder how valuable such article is.
From an information side and a design side and a discovery side, it isn't wrong.
...but from the advancing the goal perspective with regards to not just Linux but other OS's like Haiku, BSD and alternative Windows shell replacements... it's important that everyone be clear on what the cause is and what the goal is because sometimes just like companies, professional goals are different from the over-arching company goals that's supposedly simple to get everyone else on board.
tomos:
I'm wondering -
if I were to install Linux-(or whatever) on a machine and back up any important data &/or keep it on a separate partition:-
Can I do regular image-backups of the OS so that if something goes wrong I can just restore the last functional version of the OS?
That way I wouldnt have to try figure out how to fix "a python backtrace when one of the thousand front-ends coded in it inevitably goes bottom-up, for example".
Paul Keith:
@tomos
I don't really know terminal commands but maybe this article is what you're looking for?
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=35087
Ehtyar:
Don't get me wrong, I totally agree that usability (or lack thereof) is an issue on Linux, but until it improves, what's a newbie to do? I'm a user level sysadmin myself. I can't imagine a tenth of my users using Linux...nor would I imagine anyone would tolerate the productivity loss.
I'd like to clarify that I've never actually said "If you can't do this, then Linux isn't for you", that just happens to be the most direct way of expressing yourself (though it also makes you sound like an elitist dick). I have, on ocassion, conveyed to friends that perhaps Linux isn't what they were searching for in terms of an alternative to Windows.
Needless to say, that was all it took to get everybody else onboard. 8)
-40hz (October 20, 2009, 06:02 PM)
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I'm not sure how that applies to the Linux Wi-Fi debate, Atheros is still the only major chipset maker with native Linux drivers since how long...?
Ehtyar.
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