Wow, $170 paid for endless thousands of dollars of equivalent software, friendly support (evidence below) and admission into what in any other conceivable discipline would be a select group of longtimers who would not have the slightest thing to do with you. You offer them $170 bucks (I say offer, because you could have gotten it free) for untold thousands of hours of work (figure a dream people have been working on for 20 years) , and you can't get it figured out in WEEKS!!!, so you lash out at those very same people kind enough to accept you.
I understand your frustration, I'm 2 months in, unsure if I'm with the right distribution, confused about a hundred things, and I have a silver membership. I still use my other boot up (I'm on it now, I needed a work document printed out in exact msword format), and have faded in my all out enthusiasm for MDK. But here it is, right here, all these people are willing to reply to you after you've insulted them. That's the difference. Any amount of research would have told you that the membership was flawed... but it's flawed because they don't have the money. True, and some of that lack comes from a lack of what we are accustomed to calling professionalism.
Walk on to an American football field. Ask them if you can play, they'll 'say' no. (If you're lucky they'll be polite) You're place is in the stands. It's a multimillion dollar industry with access only to a priveledged few. Walk onto a rugby pitch, people will greet you, ask if you'd like to practice, talk to you about the game. It's an odd game, takes a while to adjust to. But you get to be involved, if you want, at just about any level you like.
There is a difference. Performance in some ways yes. Software all over the place. But at the end of the day, people like Anne (whom I've never even read before) are the reason I'm going to stick it out.
dave.
Anne Wilson wrote:
On Thursday 11 Nov 2004 22:54, Jack wrote:
Canon gear is always hard, as they will not cooperate in releasing api details. However, it is sometimes possible to get things to work. Did you ask any specific questions about this?1 - It never did "see" my Canon D760 copier/printer.
I'm not an expert - just someone who tries to help. I'm especially not an expert on nvidia - my one and only nvidia card disappoints me.2 - Couldn't get my nvidia video capture to work, despite help from experts like Anne Wilson.
3 - Couldn't upgrade to KDE 3.3, despite having the CD for it and despite help from experts like Randall. I spent *weeks* on this. Nothing I tried worked, nor did any suggestions work.
This is not a task for a newbie.
4 - I use voice recognition extensively (Dragon NS and IBM ViaVoice). I don't believe this even exists for Linux.
5 - Most damning of all was my attempted upgrade to 10.1 official. I
completely wiped my drive to do a clean install, and after everything
was said and done, the official version could not find the internet, nor
my onboard (Asus P4P800) sound card.
You probably didn't check all the Configuration options late in the install. There is no reason why those could not have been persuaded to work.
10.0 had no trouble finding these 2, nor did the community version of 10.1. Luckily for me, I had imaged the drive beforehand, so I was able to go back to 10.1 community.
6 - I spent the $170 or so bucks to become a silver club member, but not
once have I received an answer from Mandrake when I found myself stuck.
What questions did you ask, and where?
I may sound harsh, Jack, but you have to realised thatI see great potential in Linux and I will maintain my dual-boot system, slowly learning to survive in Linux while waiting (and hoping) for the operating system to mature to a more usable state...
a) you're a newbie, and don't know enough to make things easy
b) you've chosen a bleeding edge distro, so somethings have to be tweaked until things work correctly
c) you're ambitious (good thing) and try things that you're not ready for (good, but risky)
Anne
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