[Scottish] Re: time spent on Linux stuff...

[William Hamilton]

Gordon JC Pearce wrote:
> babaguy wrote:
>>  William Anderson wrote: This is the Wrong Approach, imo. As Ben
>> mentioned earlier, it's awfulto turn round and say to someone "the
>> distro you have selected is tehwrongness". For general purpose
>> personal computing, Ubuntu is just asappropriate as Fedora,
>> Slackware, SuSE; more so in some cases, andespecially wrt later
>> Ubuntu releases such as Edgy, as the UI andusability is just so
>> strong and easy to pick up (usually).If I have a problem with my 2003
>> Fiat Punto, I really don't expect to beadvised "tsk, you want a Ford
>> Fiesta, that'll tidy up that disc brakeproblem you're having". Or
>> "can't change channels on your Thomson 28"CRT TV set? A 42" LCD Sony
>> Bravia will sort that out just nicely". Seemy point? William, I
>> certainly see your point and I agree with you. But the problems I've
>> encountered with what should be very straightforward tasks in the
>> Ubuntu 5.10 (from only a year and half ago, after all...) are - I
>> hope and trust - not Linux or even Ubuntu problems generally, but,
>
>> as I've said, a concatenation of unfortunate events. One ought to be
>> able to use the Thesaurus in O.O. Writer...
>>
>> One ought to be able to cut or copy from a web page and paste into an
>> O.O. Writer document, either via keyboard shortcuts or via the GUI
>> options...
>
> You can.  I've been doing this all week, with a list of translations
> of 30-odd pages of a website translated into 14 different languages.
>
>> One ought to be able to open the BIOS, open the different boot
>> options (as I can do) and be able to select the desired boot sequence
>> using the designated keys (which I can't because there is no key or
>> combination of keys that will highlight and selects those options -
>> the only thing one is allowed to do is press esc or F1 to exit ) Yet,
>> as I've said, the Ubuntu booted immediately from CD, installed and
>> wiped the Windows disk without any discernable problems...
>
> You can.  Ubuntu hasn't somehow magically modified your BIOS so you
> can't boot from CD, you're just not doing it right.
>
>> One ought to be able to install downloaded sofware via Synaptic when
>> no other installation pkg is running or has been running during that
>> session, without getting the message that some other pkg like apt-get
>> is running and needs to be closed - 
>
> You can, you're just not following the instructions.  It works for
> everyone else.  If it says another package manager is running, then
> another package manager is running.
>
>> One ought to be able to hit the <tab> key to complete a file
>> name or hit it repeatedly to have it bring up a series of possible
>> software packages or at least give some response besides a beep. 
>
> It beeps if there are no possible tab completions to display.  What do
> you want it to do, try and guess what you mean? If I type
> "sadfasdfasdadsfg<TAB>" what should happen?
>
>> But these are the problems I've encountered. I'm not under the
>> illusion that Slackware or Mandriva or any particular version of
>> Linux would solve these very simple problems....They simply should
>> not occur. The fact they they DO occur and take up all our precious
>> time, is kind of daunting.  
>
> They occur because you're not following the instructions people are
> giving you, or you're making incorrect assumptions about how things work.
>
>> The things that I would like to be able to do with my computer and in
>> Linux are not difficult to comprehend or to do. I don't understand
>> why it has proved so tough to get them done.....
>
> Because you're not following the instructions.
>
> Gordon
>
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>
Or to sum it up: "RTFM"? :)