On Sunday 14 December 2003 07:18 pm, Guy Rouillier wrote: > Bryan, please keep in mind this is a newbie list. I realized when I > composed my initial message that I ran the risk of offending those who > might perceive me as attacking their child, and I tried the best I could > to keep subjective opinions out of my message and only point out things > that might make a newbie's experience less pleasant than it could be.
I suspect that my reaction is driven by the manner of what you pointed out. You didn't post saying, "How can I do this with Linux?" but instead by saying "Linux is deficient because I can't do this." There are two very different meanings implied by those statements, the first, that perhaps the deficiency lies with either you or Linux and that you yourself are open to solutions, the second that Linux is at fault because you have failed to do something that you wanted to do with it and there is no solution because it is not apparent to you. > Judging from the tone of your reply, I failed, and I apologize for > stepping on any toes of developer's of the products I mentioned. I was > thinking of responding to the points you raised, but I don't see > anything productive coming out of that. I would suggest rephrasing your anecdotes as I have indicated above. For instance, asking how you can start Open Office quicker under Linux, like Windows. You have already received an answer to that one. You may receive answers to the other points as well. Your experience would be improved, you would get what you want, and if there is a real deficiency with Linux, some developer might actually feel the need to address it. As opposed to saying, Linux isn't as good because it is not performing the same as Windows. You are unlikely to win much support from Open Source developers by pointing that out. Especially since some of us think that is a Good Thing. > I've been tinkering with Linux for about 4 years now, but have been > unable to adopt it full time because I haven't been able to assemble > tools similar to the ones I've gathered over the years under Win2k and > its predecessors. Unlike you, I have. You may be failing because you are approaching the problem in the wrong fashion. Rather than trying to duplicate your Windows environment and Windows tools under Linux, you might be better served to determine what functionality you are trying to accomplish and ask for ways to duplicate the functionality. You might be surprised at how easy it is to do some things under Linux that you otherwise would need an entire toolset for under Windows. I know that I have been. In my current situation, I find the opposite, there are many things that I would like to do at work with Windows that would take 5 minutes to accomplish under Linux but take hours to figure out under Windows. > I still try, though, and I'm getting closer. My > opinion is that the only way to improve the Linux experience is to point > out deficiencies I find. I would simply mention here that you are seeking to improve "your" experience, not necessarily anyone else's unless they share your problem. In some cases, we may not, since we may have found a better way or work around that solves the functional problem. Again, if you approach the community with a request for solutions rather than a list of complaints, I think that the responses that you will receive will be much better for you as well as the community. YMMV. > You apparently find that offensive, so we'll > just have to disagree. If you feel that your post was correct in tone and that future such posts will actually accomplish your goal, then I suppose we will. > I am a software developer by profession and can > contribute to improving open source software (and I do), but I don't > have the time to contribute to a dozen different areas. Since you are a developer, look again at the list of items that you had and the tone of how those items were presented and if you received the same list about one of your own products, where there were simple workarounds, or focus on alternate functional areas like security, etc., would your likely response have differed from mine? -- Bryan Phinney Software Test Engineer
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