[...]
>
> I'm not defending them! But, I can understand their position. They're
> selling their distribution for a very reasonalble -- i.e., low -- price,
> and they're entitled to make a good living. So they sell support.
>
> Yes, the docs are a bit thin in places. But, I'd bet that's because we
> all have slightly different configurations and problems. If they are very
> smart, they'll monitor this list and see if there are specific installation
> problems which they could document better.
>
A couple of quick notes. As former keeper of the RH Installation
Guide (4.0 was the end of my tenure at Red Hat) and (most) all things
support-related, I can offer a bit of a different slant on things. Not
to defend or offend anyone, but simply to try and enlighten.
-It's difficult to write a manual for something that you can do in your
sleep. The current manual is light-years beyond what I helped produce.
Still, the myriad possibilities for configurations are mind-boggling.
You just can't cover everything. The current keeper is a much better
scribe than I will ever be and I'm sure he will keep working to make the
manual as good as it can get. Given what he had to work with he has already
done amazing things.
-Support is not a simple task. No matter how much you see and do there
is always something so wild and esoteric that it takes a bit of head bashing
(your own, against the nearest wall) to see the problem sometimes. There
are questions that come in so shrouded in minutia that you forget to take
a step back and refocus. There are other things that appear blatantly
obvious but aren't. Then there are times that the support system belches
and a message gets sent to /dev/null. When the workload gets high things
slow down. All of this can combine to make things look really bad for
some folks. For most all runs well.
-In my day Faxen were the bane of my existence. Don't know about now,
but may well be the case today. I could deal with 8-10 email messages
in the time it took to respond to a single fax. Applixware may have
improved that over time. :-)
-If you have a sales/upgrade question try [EMAIL PROTECTED] (I assume
that's still a valid address) they can get the answers to you much
quicker and more accurate than the support folks. Support folks are
probably going to forward them there anyway, and this keeps them
from having to deal with non-support inquiries.
-They are listening, and everyone I know at Red Hat (most, but not all
these days) wants to provide the best product, support and service that
they can. But they're only human, and we all make mistakes from time to
time.
Back to the sidelines...
--Kit
--
--
Kit Cosper Linux Hardware Solutions, Inc. [EMAIL PROTECTED]
System solutions you can count on, system solutions that work.
1-888-LINUX-HW
Now offering Alpha systems at 633MHz with 4 MB SRAM cache.
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