by yur » Wed Apr 09, 2008 18:33
Just my 2 newbie cents:
Here is the core problem with attaining help: The user doesn't know and refuses to admit that he has a limited ability to communicate the problem. (duh). The person providing the help may not not know either but refuses to admit that he doesn't know. If he does know, he also refuses to admit that he has a limited ability to communicate a solution.
In order to facilitate a solution: we have to have two things: The same tools and the same language.
So my first suggestion is provide a list of basic tools that allow a newbie or user the ability to communicate the problem. My second suggestion is to use same language about a problem (provide a dictionary). Granted there are many, many, many blogs and websites and books containing information which contain thousands of tools and dictionaries... yet there has to be common working environment guidelines and tools (specifically for this blog). My third suggestion: separate support by version number. There of course can be a all versions the same support.
Then something like this won't pass off as an attempt at support:
"this output is sent to a log somewhere, most logs live in /var/log"
Where as what log and how to read it is left up to the newbie and "frustrated" community to put up with his requests. Suggestions for the newbie to research websites for answers gives the appearance that support then would not be needed, because the answers lie elsewhere. You'll be surprised to find that most of us read these blogs for hours (i'm gonna collect a $ summary of hours spent and do an OS comparison by cost) and end up here for support. (duh).
I am committed to learning sabayon completely and I know that "computers" are not a matter of intelligence but repetition and instruction. Therefore, i am hungry for proper and clear instruction. After spending 3 days trying to get my ATI driver working in Fedora 8 (try learning livna, shell, yum, aiglx, X, rpm, vi, aticonfig, and xong.conf in less time) and spending 3 months pin pointing which linux distro is worth the effort: I'm a little frustrated with the amount of "noise" and the lack of clear direction. Remember: most commit to an OS for the purpose of producing work with it - not to just mess around with it all day long.