Do people know too much?
Last week a friend emailed me asking me, "How do I add the disappear buttons to the panel in gnome?" Poor fellow was in much pain. Thing was, he had read about the Configuration Editor from somewhere and also heard some guys speak about it in his LUG. So, the bloke tried desperately to find the checkbox in Configuration Editor, under panel and what not. I am told he spent hours at it.
If only the guy had right-clicked on the panel itself and clicked on Properties. There in all its glory is the "Show hide buttons" check box.
Now the question, is it fair for this guy to say that Linux is unfriendly, that it is impossible to customize/configure! I mean, should a guy who refuses to use his brain and puts his limited knowledge to test be heard at all. Think about it.
I believe that it is because of the limited study/research that claims like these are often made. The fact remains, it is very difficult to impress upon newbies the importance for self tutoring. We can have books, we can have wikis, bulletin boards and all, but such clams will always be made until the newbies realize the importance of reading.
Some newbies are hopeless.
Then again, so are some of the Gurus. Visit any bulletin boards on Linux and you never know when you might bump into a RTFM!@#@ post or Google is your friend. Why is it?
Why is it that the Guru feels so sure that the newbie has not already read the man pages? The idea of being rude to a newbie just because you have more than a 1000 posts and he has asked a simple question seems stupid, to say the least.
Open Source evangelists have always given a high priority to the community. Off late, this community has expanded to include google. So it is often expected from the newbie to read all through the man pages, 2-3 pages of the results yielded by google and then a search at the forum boards before asking the question!
Whooh. The question, should a newbie be hanged if he doesn't know/do this? I mean what if the guy is such a noob he doesn't know what the heck man pages are? Then, what is the point of making "RTFM" replies? To him, it's yet another mystery.
The solution to this, maybe, is to include a page with all the distributions that gives the users an idea on things such as Multimedia, Internet, Man pages etc. A little help page on the desktop to get them started might just do the trick.
Think about it.
I rest my case.
If only the guy had right-clicked on the panel itself and clicked on Properties. There in all its glory is the "Show hide buttons" check box.
Now the question, is it fair for this guy to say that Linux is unfriendly, that it is impossible to customize/configure! I mean, should a guy who refuses to use his brain and puts his limited knowledge to test be heard at all. Think about it.
I believe that it is because of the limited study/research that claims like these are often made. The fact remains, it is very difficult to impress upon newbies the importance for self tutoring. We can have books, we can have wikis, bulletin boards and all, but such clams will always be made until the newbies realize the importance of reading.
Some newbies are hopeless.
Then again, so are some of the Gurus. Visit any bulletin boards on Linux and you never know when you might bump into a RTFM!@#@ post or Google is your friend. Why is it?
Why is it that the Guru feels so sure that the newbie has not already read the man pages? The idea of being rude to a newbie just because you have more than a 1000 posts and he has asked a simple question seems stupid, to say the least.
Open Source evangelists have always given a high priority to the community. Off late, this community has expanded to include google. So it is often expected from the newbie to read all through the man pages, 2-3 pages of the results yielded by google and then a search at the forum boards before asking the question!
Whooh. The question, should a newbie be hanged if he doesn't know/do this? I mean what if the guy is such a noob he doesn't know what the heck man pages are? Then, what is the point of making "RTFM" replies? To him, it's yet another mystery.
The solution to this, maybe, is to include a page with all the distributions that gives the users an idea on things such as Multimedia, Internet, Man pages etc. A little help page on the desktop to get them started might just do the trick.
Think about it.
I rest my case.
posted by LinuxLala at
1:14 AM
