[Glastonbury] Just a little idea

[Andrew M.A. Cater]

On Mon, Nov 08, 2004 at 11:38:59PM +0000, Martin Wheeler wrote:
> On Mon, 8 Nov 2004, Sean Miller wrote:
> 
> >I would happily recount the disasterous attempt by Wheeler to replace my
> >SuSE with Debian a year or two back...
> 
> But Sean -- that's only if you're a member of Mensa!  The rest of us can 
> do it in under half-an-hour.
> 
Gentlemen,

There's always more than one way to do it :)  

Sean, I got a brand new copy of SuSE 9.1 professional off the front 
cover of the Linux Magazine yesterday.  It wouldn't install on my disk 
(which already had a Windows XP partition) though the claim was there 
that it would. It wouldn't recognise the time zone immediately. 
It defaulted to DHCP and wouldn't allow me to sort out my network card.

Once I'd sorted that lot out, it then wanted to download about 300M of
updates from an FTP site in Kaiserslauten (WTF - _all_ the useful mirrors 
are in Germany). The machine has ended up relatively up to date - but only has 
one user. Time to install a "non-expert" default install - about 2 1/2 hours.

Do I rant and rave about how SuSE is total rubbish and how you can't
get the support for it on this LUGOG list and how when you do you get
crap advice from zealots who should know better?

No - I dig in, use my general knowledge and fix it. If you can't fix it
- learn to ask sensible questions and to listen to the answers.

If I want DocBook advice, I turn to Martin. If I want multimedia advice,
I'd probably listen to Tim Hall first.  If I want to know how to set up
a multimedia multi tasking desktop for a school that's strapped for
resources - I'd probably talk to Steve/Martin and see if the chap from
Microbitz could lend a hand with any dead machines.  Blender - I'd
listen to a smart schoolboy (Bryn). If Martin wants Debian advice, he 
quite often rings me up - and I'll offer advocacy and advice for free.
Zealotry usually requires me to be provoked by an idiot or two :)

There is always a choice: you can be smart and learn, or you can be
dumb, arrogant and self confident in the extreme.  Generally, the second
choice leads to lots more (unforeseen) opportunities to try out the
first choice :)

Andy