Great horror story, Ken. Beats my early experiences as a total beginner
where it took me about 6 months to find and get running a distro that
would talk to the internet via my desktop. I got a professional in to
help. After several hours (no exaggeration) he gave up. He was so
embarrassed he did not charge me, true story! A few weeks later I tried
another distro and somehow fluked it. Had no idea how. Months later I am
now able to get some more recent releases to behave with the internet
but not all. Maybe there is something odd about my hardware.You are
obviously acquiring greater depth of learning as a result of your
experiences than I. But we both share the qualities most needed for a
Linux newbie - bloody minded stubborness and refusal to be beaten.
John PB. (The PB stands for perennial beginner).
Ken Wilson wrote:
As a relative new linux user I have been suffering similar problems. I
dont know whether it is a problem with my hardware/software/the way
that I set it up/the options that I chose or didnt find. "File a bug
report" I dont know which log file to append, how to actually describe
the problem for techos appart from "I couldnt get it to work:" which
will often come out as "its bad" or "its fcuked". Any answer that I get
back will require me to work comfortably from a command line. If it
doesn't work first attempt at fixing it do I go on changing things that
I may not be able to get back to previous state. Sure it is easy for
someone who knows their way around confidently to poke around files and
find what doesnt look right but I dont have that knowledge yet. Changing
a random part of a random file is unlikely to fix a problem, yet till I
know more, that is what I feel I am doing.
I had Mac at work in Antartica so got plenty of time to read manuals and
go from no computing to able to work on computer and terminal via GUI.
Bought Win 95 laptop pre CD, and had trouble installing serial CD drive.
That got stollen so bought win2k desktop set up and used regularly by a
friend who then migrated back to NZ. I found all the trial versions of
software that he was regularly removing and replacing in the month after
he left. I failed in the remove replace game and this software said that
I had already used it so buy me now!! at ~$100 US a piece.
I decided to try open source, bought redhat 7.2 boxed set with lots of
paper manuals. Bought another hard desk and dual booted it with Win 2K.
Used that but the CD burner no go.
Mother board failure so replaced by an associate, they upgraded to
RedHat 9 to get it to go. Had not yet tested CD burner, read was OK.
I wanted USB to work so bought Redhat WS3 hoping that Redhat would have
these things sorted out by now as digital cameras have been out for a
while. Redha tws3 did not detect my flash memory drive, or compact
flash in my multibay card reader. Much reading of websites, caches of
support mailing lists etc and I had the answer. I added the line about
luns to the required file in Xemacs. No go and now my system became
unstable and did weird things. I commented out the line, no improvement,
I deleted the line, no improvement, I repaired Redhat, I reformated and
reloaded Redhatws3. I was given Mandrake so I installed that, it
detected the flash memory stick, but not the Compact flash. I bought a
single bay CF reader but that has not detected the compact flash card so
far. And still my CD burner reads but doesn't write. I tried to back up
my email to the flash memory stick, but copying files to the fash memory
stick caused evolution to crash and loose all its email.
Maybe Debian would be easier to change things than a commercial bundled
packaged version, so I Bought debian woody from elx as CDs seeing the
burner no go and attempted that but it crashed on trying to start X with
video driver set to SIS for the on board video SIS651 chip on a ASIS
P4SP-MX motherboard and also with it set to VGA. all the monitor
settings were correct.
Now I have reloaded Mandrake read more websites, consulted the half
metre high stack of linux books and looked at Mandrakes settings cause
it worked, and in what I think was the correct file the settings I used
in Debian instalation where what Mandrake has.
In all of this I have very much had the feeling that I don't know what I
am doing. I have lost all data that I have on my hard disc as it has
been multipily reformatted and the CD no go. It is good that none of
this is critical for me, but friends will only get email if they email
me first.
I am a terchnofile, I like learning and am now in the situation where I
have nothing to loose except time so will push on but have no real idea
of how. With the time I have spent on this I could have worked a few
more shifts, bought a new computor and lots of windows software and gone
away for a holiday in the remainder of the time.
Something that just works would be nice. Impossible to set up does not
make up for never breaks down.
Ken
On Mon, 2004-12-06 at 07:35 +1100, john gibbons wrote:
Thank you for the questions that are meant to help. However, I am
inclined to think that the need to ask the questions at all helps me
make my point. One simple interface that asks simple questions and
automatically installs is a real need for Linux if it is ever going to
be upon PCs for the common mob which includes me. For as long as
different distros go about a very common communication task in often
very different ways they delay widespread acceptance of Linux by home
and small business users. The distros may be Ferraris, Rolls Royces or
outback rustbuckets underneath, but they must be able to accomodate the
day-to-day travel needs of the ordinary drivers who can get into them
and use the manual or automatic gearbox to get to their destination.
Other drivers and engineers can break the speed records, design better
engines, or whatever, if they have the skills. On the surface, at the
interface, they must be understandable and useable for the most common
tasks by ordinary folk. If not, they will forever be brilliant feats of
engineering suitable for a limited range of users.
Nothing new about that comment, I guess.
Different distros will use KDE and/or GNOME and everyday users will
adapt and be able to use whichever distro they started with or switch
between them and get common tasks done. That is all the great majority
want. So why not have a simple common interface for downloading and
installing, which is a very common task? Behind the interface the really
great distros can continue to do it more elegantly and those who
appreciate and understand the elegance and the advantages it offers will
provide the appreciation and the use.
So, I think that the basic question is not "What is it I don't
understand?", even though that is meant to be of help, but, "What is not
being quite obvious?".
John.
Ken Foskey wrote:
On Sun, 2004-12-05 at 10:32 +1100, john gibbons wrote:
I would like to raise the goal post for Linux software interface
developers from 'intuitional' to 'bloody obvious'. I am getting some
frustration off my chest after trying to download some Linux software
for the first time and get it up and running. According to the
directions it was easy. My question is : for whom?
Thanks for your comments john however we have little to actually
understand what you are talking about....
What particular distribution did you try?
What setup option did you take gnome, kde or other.
What particular problems are you facing? Unfortunately developers tend
to be literal people that work on 'this button X has no meaning to me
please reword' than 'its broken please fix'.
Raise problem reports with the actual suppliers. I have raised 10 bug
reports through debian packages so far with 80% success rate.
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