[CS-FSLUG] Nathan

[N. Thompson]

David McGlone wrote:

>On Sunday 25 April 2004 03:48 pm, N. Thompson wrote:
>
>  
>
>>>If I might make such a bold suggestion: whaddya say about taking off
>>>that blog post for now? Try the peacemaking steps Jesus gave us: go
>>>contact the people privately that you feel have hurt you. I bet they
>>>will apologize and say they never meant to imply what you feel they are
>>>implying. If not, talk to this list as a whole and see if we can't
>>>resolve things. If none of that resolves the situation for you, then go
>>>ahead and paste that entry back online -- I just doubt that will be
>>>necessary.
>>>
>>>	Just keep in mind we all love ya, bro.
>>>
>>>	Blessings to you...
>>>
>>>	-Tim
>>>      
>>>
>>Sure, I can take the blog post down, I didn't realize how it would be
>>interpreted until I read David's post.
>>    
>>
>
>The purpose of me asking if I could put it on my blog instead of nate taking 
>it down is because most members that nathan has refered to, hasn't had a 
>chance to read it so they could respond appropriatly and try to explain to 
>nathan their exact words.
>
>Or it would be just as good to post the blog entry on the list so it can be 
>discussed.
>
>  
>

Ok, the blog post is in the attachment.

>Another reason it would be good is because people can refer back to the 
>mailing archives in an effort to explain to Nathan what they really mean in 
>contrast to what Nathan had posted in an attempt to help him feel better and 
>let him know that we were not trying to be mean, but trying to get him to 
>realize things.
>
>I offered to try and help you with your Mandrake, IIRC Tim did too. And this 
>was when version 9.2 had just came out.
>
>  
>

There was nothing either you or Tim could have done unless you knew how 
to fix the problem, as I recall you didn't even experience it on you're 
systems. I turn off supermount and I set it up so any user can mount and 
unmount all removable media drives I would also select the no-auto 
option so the drive would not be handled automatically because in my 
experience thats been problematic. For some reason in Mandrake 9.2 when 
a drive was mounted it wouldn't register as being so, while I could 
browse it I could also accidentally mount it a second time and from then 
on I would neither be able to unmount the drive nor my home folder even 
when shutting down. This might not have sounded so bad because I could 
just remember what was mounted and what wasn't but every time urpmi 
wanted one of the mandarke CD's or I forgot and used kiwkdisk to mount 
or unmount drives the drive would get mounted twice and the mount system 
would get stuck.

>From there, I don't remember everything in order, but somehow you ended up 
>running gentoo? or some other distro that you said you bought and didn't want 
>to abandon until you felt you got your money's worth.
>
>  
>

I bought a copy of Xandros Linux, unfortunately the software was 
outdated and the folks at Xandros kept promising updates but never 
released much of anything. I wanted KDevelop 3 and Qt 3.2 but all they 
did was update Kopete and a few other trivial applications. I also 
couldn't customize it much because there was very little software 
available, the included version of bzFlag was ancient and I couldn't get 
any KDE themes to compile.

>But I kept trying to persuade you to go back to Mandrake and I would give you 
>all the help I could in an effort to get your system running smoothly.
>
>You also ignored that offer for help.
>
>  
>

I was trying different distributions at that time.

>You then was offered SuSE disks from IIRC Ed Hurst? or somebody, and they 
>burnt you a copy of SuSE and even paid for the shipping to send you those 
>CD's in an effort to try and help you out. While you were trying out SuSE, 
>you IIRC stated that you didn't like Mandrake anymore, and SuSE was working 
>good  for you at the moment, except for a few minor things you didn't 
>perticularily like.
>
>  
>

SUSE was nice, the free FTP version was what I tried first, it was 
missing a few packages I think were left out on purpose to convince 
users that they would be better off purchasing a boxed copy which had 
the missing packages on CD. The problem with that was that 
OpenOffice.org would run very slow because of a missing libjawt.so which 
wasn't available in the FTP install version and SUSE plugger would hang 
for a minute or more when I would insert or remove my USB thumb drive. 
When the SUSE CD's Ed sent got here they wouldn't read, I tried cleaning 
them with some sort tissue after they failed to read three or four times 
and after that it seemed to be going fine but despite having cleaned all 
the disks for some reason it still failed to install some packages and 
it turned out to be unbootable.

>Somehow along the way I think you ended up back with mandrake, until here 
>recently you decided to give Fedora Core 1 a shot after I had installed it 
>and praised it in some areas.
>
>  
>

I tried Mandrake 10.0 when the communit edition was released because I 
was considering going back to that, everthing was going perfect until it 
messed up with my USB thumb drive and every time I would plug it in it 
would create a new desktop icon for it, after a while that would fill up 
my desktop.

>and while you were running fedora, you praised how you liked the mix between 
>automated configuration and hard configuration, but all along since I can 
>remember, you were not happy with mandrake, because you claimed you didn't 
>like their configuration tools and was tired of having to do configuration by 
>hand and wanted more or better configuration tools.
>
>  
>

I never complained too much about Mandrake although I did probably 
mention some displeasure with a few of their tools that could have used 
some work. Lycoris was the only distribution I really didn't like the 
tools on because it was so lacking that it would require manual 
configuration but at the same time it would mangle the files.

>Somewhere along the line you chose to give Slackware a try. After a matter of 
>an hour or so you wrote to the list praising some things about slack.
>
>  
>

Some things, but I didn't say I was definately gonig to stick with it. 
Early impressions are generally fairly good unless the product in 
question is really bad.

>It wasn't within a day or so, you then started praising mandrake again, after 
>you had made mandrake sound like it was the worst distro you'd ever seen, and 
>hinted to the list you were going to go back to either Mandrake or SuSE IIRC.
>
>  
>

I never said anything about Mandake that wasn't true, Mandrake 9.2 had 
terrible bugs, 10.0 was much better but choked right near the end. I was 
going to try the official release but it wasn't out yet so in the mean 
time I was going to try Fedora Core and Slackware.

>Then someone on the list made an attempt to get you to hold off going back to 
>SuSE or Mandrake because they had some things that might help you out with 
>Slack. (another attempt to help you) Which I don't know at the moment whether 
>you have held off or not but your journal entry was completly the opposite.
>
>  
>

I did hold off, I mentioned in the list that I was most likely going to 
keep Slackware until Mandrake 10.0 official was released publically.

>My question is, How could you say those things? I have done nothing but try to 
>be a brother to you and of as much help as I could in an effort to help you 
>get an almost "ideal" install of linux, but I can't help you, nor can anyone 
>else help you if you install a different distro every other day.
>
>  
>

What things were you referring to? I wasn't only talking about CS-FSLUG 
in that blog posting I was also and especially talking about what 
happened to me in some IRC channels like #linuxorbit, #suse and 
#mandrake on irc.freenode.net.

>It's not getting you nowhere at all and that is something the list has been 
>trying to tell you for a very long time, and yes there has been times some 
>harsh words have been used because you were contradicting youself too much, 
>but Nathan, sometimes it takes a harsh word to get somebody to realize 
>something, but in *NO* way has anyone on this list tried to hurt you, so 
>*PLEASE* understand that.
>
>David M.
>
>  
>

I don't know how many people are in the CS-FSLUG list but my 
contradicting myself is moreso an issue of peoples different 
interepretations of what I've said. I don't remember contradicting 
myself except for when I was posting first impressions of a distribution 
and then following up on it if I found something worth mentioning. Who 
doesn't find that their first impression of a distribution doesn't 
change after using it for a while?

>
>
>
>  
>
>>>On Sun, 2004-04-25 at 10:18, David McGlone wrote:
>>>      
>>>
>>>>Your Blog does not have the ability to post comments, so would you care
>>>>if I posted your most recent blog entry on my blog, because I think all
>>>>this has been misunderstood and you should at least give some of the
>>>>people you refered to a chance to explain themselves and explain to you
>>>>why they chose the words they did.
>>>>
>>>>I really think you owe that to some of the people on this list, including
>>>>me.
>>>>        
>>>>
>
>
>_______________________________________________
>ChristianSource FSLUG mailing list
>Christiansource at ofb.biz
>http://cs.uninetsolutions.com
>
>  
>

-------------- next part --------------
Distributions means something for everyone, right?

I've found it frustrating how every time I want to try a different distribution and I want to tell about my experience in an on-line LUG that I'm a member of a number of the other members -- usually the same people every time -- tell me off for not using one specific distribution and sticking with it. They pull the negative out of everything I say and use it as an excuse to say I'm not trying hard enough to make such and such a distribution work the way I think it should.

The entire point of distributions is choice, if I don't like one choice I can just switch to another and thats the beauty of Linux being open source; there are different distributions to meet different needs not one that should be modified for hours by a professional in order to fit one specific purpose. So why then do I get told off for not sticking with one distribution, isn't it necessary to try different distribution in order to find the ideal one to meet my needs?

Its not hard to see why people get off on the wrong foot with the Linux crowd, I've been using Linux for years and yet I still find it difficult to put up with the very outspoken and opinionated people that populate Linux IRC channels and mailing lists. I've found the people in Linux IRC channels for example to get very frustrated when you ask questions to which they think the answers are obvious, but then thats very inconsiderate because unless it was a rhetorical question I wouldn't have asked it if I knew the answer.

Just recently for example I was looking at possible alternatives for Mandrake 10.0 because while I've been a fan of Mandrake's products up to version 9.2 of their Linux distribution which was released as stable while still having several fairly serious bugs, I wanted to know if I could get more bang for my buck if I were to buy a boxed set or go with an entirely free distribution. That lead me to trying both Fedora Core 1 and Slackware Linux which were decent distributions that ran fairly well with some tweaking.

Why didn't I stick with Fedora Core or Slackware then? The answer to that is very simple, Fedora Core and Slackware involved more work to run then Mandrake or SUSE Linux. There are several differently opinionated people who will tell go to go for either such and such a distro or a distribution with such and such an approach, thats why you'll often hear people say “there's something for everyone” when they start talking about different distributions. For me the ideal distribution is one thats easy to maintain so I can do programming work instead of spend hours with configuration, I get attacked every time I mention this because someone has to point out that surely I've spend more time configuring all the different distributions I've tried then I would have had I just stick with distro X and tried to configure it once despite the lack some or all configuration tools.

One of the reasons I don't stick with distributions that require all that manual work despite the argument mentioned in the last paragraph is that I don't want to have to do all that manual configuration every time something needs tweaking, or every time something needs to be reinstalled or reconfigured to work in a different situation. Thats why I like distributions like Mandrake and SUSE with graphical configuration tools, because every time something changes all I have to do is start up those graphical tools in in five minutes or less I've got everything taken care of. There's also the menu system to keep in mind, Mandrake and SUSE have much nicer menus then most other distributions and to get the same result in the other distribution would mean manually editing those menus every time a new piece of software is installed or updated.

Now there's one last thing to consider, why aren't I sticking with Mandrake or SUSE then, the truth about that is that I've not had a chance to explore all the other distributions out there that caught my curiosity and I've managed to find some reason to justify looking at the alternative distributions. Mandrake tends to have bugs relating to removable USB media in every version, I've always had a problem where I would unplug my USB disk and another mount point would be created and another icon would be added to my desktop for each time the USB disk would be reinserted after that. Usually though that wouldn't start happening until I forgot to remove the disk before booting or rebooting into Mandrake Linux but there didn't seem to be a way to fix it, thus making Mandrake unreliable. SUSE's problem is less severe but still a pain, every time I insert the USB disk the hardware detection applet locks up for a minute or more, thats a long time to be sitting there waiting for the disk to be accessible, and unplugging it has a similar effect, the hardware detection applet locks up for another minute or more.

My constant switching of distributions isn't a bad thing, I don't see why every so often someone will pipe up and attack me for not sticking with one distribution. I'm not harming Linux by trying all the different options there are and by writing a little commentary or mini-review of it after trying it isn't harming the distribution in question either. Every commentary or mini-review does mention the weaknesses of a certain distribution but if it didn't it would be dishonest as no distribution is perfect. “No distribution's perfect” is another argument I've heard for why I should stick with one distribution but as I've mentioned I can't know that no distribution will be to my liking until I've tried them all, and by trying different distributions I might not find exactly what I'm looking for but I do have a chance of finding the one that comes closest.

I suppose I'm making Linux users sound bad but they aren't all like that, however a few bad apples can spoil the bunch unfortunately; I've often contemplated leaving the on-line Linux mailing list in which I come across the most criticism because the people who give me a hard time for not sticking with one distribution, they don't care for my reasoning as to why I don't want to stick with a distribution, they just want to slam me for not using one of their favourite distributions because it interferes with their illusion that because it works for them it should work perfectly for everyone.

I doubt I'll find a group of other Linux users that I can get along with and thats unfortunate, Linux's own worst enemy is the rivalry between users of different distributions, desktop environments or applications and the arguments, comments and nitpicking that goes with it. It may sound like I'm being very one sided and only attacking Linux but I've not run into much better conditions in any other Operating system related mailing lists or IRC channels.