Now I know you hardcore Linux users dont like that, but if you want the rest of us to use Linux it has to be user friendly. Not all of us want to learn code. Brad.
Actually I think this is a valid point, for the Zaurus in particular to be able to gain significant market share it really will have to be very user friendly. That said I also agree with this bit in the reply:
Open Source works as long as people give as much as they take. When an inflood of people come in who whine about everything and don\'t contribute back to the community, then no one benefits.
<RANT>
(This is not targeted at you Brad, just that the conversation sparked this off) I don\'t think any of us is paid to inhabit the forums, I\'ve worked my way from knowing absolutely nothing about Linux (Sept \'02 when I bought my Z) to being fairly competent now. I had to work my way up just as you are doing.
Now the things which annoy me are:
1) not searching before posting a question - there is nothing more annoying for me than seeing someone post an identical question which I\'ve already answered (many times before). At one point I had a txt file of answers which I just copied and pasted from in reply to these \'standard\' questions (see this link:
http://www.zaurus.com/dev/board/index.php?...7&hl=questions)2) People not supplying enough information - this smacks of laziness, if you haven\'t bothered to list the relevant info in a posting chances are you haven\'t even tried to work out what is wrong yourself. Now there are cases where people just don\'t know enough/what they should tell us so this is slightly biased I realise
3) People demanding answers, then getting pissed off when they don\'t materialise. My first problem was to do with using the dialup scripting. It wouldn\'t authenticate, I knew nothing about Linux. I posted all of the relevant information (the post is now long gone I\'m afraid along with the rest of zauruszone) but still there wasn\'t a clear cut answer. So I read the dialup/ppp/etc. FAQs (
www.tldp.org), worked out how to get syslog enabled and finally found out that all I needed to do was to add a trailing tilde to my dialup script. I was really frustrated that no-one could answer my question, but I did realise that I wasn\'t paying for them to answer so I really had to rely on myself (and my uni tech support who do get paid in a roundabout way ;-).
I\'ve probably become one of those people which newbies complain about. Perhaps it\'s just evolution :-)
</RANT>
Best regards to you all, I feel much better now.
Si