And why are you telling me all of this (since you replied while quoting me).

Now here's ((my 0.5*2)*2)*10-18

I used slackware since 8.1 and I have ZERO problems on slack and WHEN I DO (I've had all sorts of problems), I managed to fix them without the help provided on IRC except i'm just fed up of always compiling from source (when you know how its done... you don't care anymore. thats how I am) so I want a SMART package manager. Here I am with debian.

EVEN THOUGH we have to naturally check the internet for documents before asking help from other users, newbies remain newbies so when comes the time where somebody asks a question like "x doesn't run", we have to AT LEAST point them out some documents or guide them towards the way of searching for help AND NOT just insulting them and giving them a bad image of the linux community. That's their job in IRC, not to scare others away.

I second that motion your honnor

but seriously, are gonna come here all the time, i mean that is what this place is here for. Do WE as a cominuty want to scare them away or teach them, if the problem is simple, like, how do i start X from the command line? then an answer could be like well you type such and such at the prompt,,,, oh and by the way, try reading such and such a site and also try reading susch and such man pages...

Aanyways you get the drift.... and granted that happens here most of the time, but the same should be on irc too.....

ooo, its getting late, I am off to the pub now to fill myself with lots of beer

The response was NOT directed at you Kev. Pointing folks to to the relevant resource you say...yeah ... we are doing that here and at Slack forums too aren't we? BUT the one thing that we should NOT encourage is FREE LOAFERS. It is BETTER to teach a man/woman how to fish than it is to hand the fish to the man with NO input from him/her whatsoever. In the process of assisting him/her, it is only MORALLY RIGHT of us to tell him/her ohhh "do it this way or that way" BUT to hone his/her skills at doing things for himself/herself...

The problem with a lot of the questions here and elsewhere is one that can be surmized in a few sentences i.e. NON-specific, merry-go-round, obviously NEVER bothered with looking through archives for similar natured probs or many a times > answers were already provided in responses to their questions direct BUT they somehow for whatever reason, IGNORE the suggested remedies/solutions...must we create an FAQ of sort with font size set to 48 to ENSURE all RTFAQ? I'm SURE even if we have a FAQ of font size 48, some will still dive BLINDLY into the forum...it is the duplication of effort that is UNPRODUCTIVE. How on earth are WE to HELP people who REFUSES or CANNOT be HELPED? Will an FAQ with sized 48 fonts in BOLD HELP?

Someone from another forum correctly summarize the characteristics MOST Debian (and for that matter Slackers as well) users as such:

Quote:" From what I've seen, Debian, and Linux users 'in general' have the following characteristics:

* unstoppable curiosity and tenacity.
* a (fierce) sense of independence.
* higher than average intelligence and perhaps education.
* a better than average knowledge of and ability to deal with computers, operating systems, and technical issues in general."

Well, he is sure SPOT on. You CANNOT hope to SURVIVE and THRIVE in Debian WITHOUT INITIATIVE, INTELLIGENCE and ALERTNESS. I'm NOT one who sells ONLY the GOOD and the PLESANT of Debian or GNU/Linux and conveniently glosses over the problems...Let's be BRUTALLY FRANK about this - GNU/Linux is NOT Windows...if you come to GNU/Linux thinking you can just carry on the way you do things the way you are used to in Windows i.e. point-and-click your way through, well, you are better off sticking to Windows...

I promise ALL of you (i.e. would be migrants to Debian and GNU/Linux) kernel panics, superblock failures, and the likes will strike ... it is just a matter of TIME. NO GUI for you to do any salvaging...you just have to dive into commandline to FIX things...this is the REALITY as it is...don't SWEETTALK Windows folks into GNU/Linux WITHOUT INFORMING them of GNU/Linux "FAULTS" and "IMPERFECTIONS". To do so is to be plain DISHONEST. Without preparing your would-be-users for a PARADIGM SHIFT, you will be like what you said GUILTY of giving GNU/Linux a BAD name i.e. by pumping their EXPECTATIONS up SKY HIGH and when the REALITY FAILS to meet these EXPECTATIONS, some very IRREPARABLE DAMAGE can be done to the growing reputation of GNU/Linux...ponder that...

Re-read my responses and the new one just above this one...people get SICK and TIRED having to address the SAME OLD questions over and over again ... sometimes the SAME question can appear in 2-3 different threads on the SAME day...sometimes I wonder WHY on Earth, these folks are given EYES...for they are obviously NOT put to PRODUCTIVE use...might as well give them away to the millions of folks who TRULY DESERVE these EYES...hmmm...starting X from the commandline is a BASIC MUST know...it is like the BASIC MUST KNOW that you CANNOT molest or rape any woman/man/boy/girl you desire AGAINST their WILL...if you are in NEED for a RELIEF, you'll EITHER have to look for your wife/partner/girlfriend/boyfriend or procure the services of a prostitute...

Anyway if newbies/would-be converts are so EASILY SCARED away, perhaps it just simply means they do NOT possess the NECESSARY ATTITUDE and APTITUDE for Debian and GNU/Linux and are thus LOSERS in LIFE....are all newbies/would-be converts LOSERS or are you a GO-GETTER? GNU/Linux does NOT compel one to use the OS, and NEITHER does it LOCK you in the way some other OSes do. GNU/Linux is ALL about CHOICE and FREEDOM i.e. don't like it, well, you can jump ship anytime...nobody is STOPPING you, you have the RIGHT to CHOICE and the FREEDOM to STAY and FIGHT or be a QUITTER...the FREEDOM and CHOICE is with YOU and nobody else...

Remember FAILING to PLAN is PLANNING for FAILURE. INFORM would-be-converts/newbies of the TRUTH and REALITY that is GNU/linux so that they can make an INFORMED CHOICE. Don't hoist them HIGH ONLY to have them come CRASHING DOWN to PIECES later...

...yeah, I definitely am one, myself. But I do enjoy editing config files from command line. And I always hated when people made fun of others for using pico/nano instead of vi/emacs, it's a moot argument anyhow. You use what you use and that's that.

More to the point, though. Yes, I totally agree that searching for answers through google, mailing-lists, forums, etc. is the first thing you should do (heck, I google first, check LQ.org second, re-google third...). BUT (and please, let's go easy on the CAPS) at some point, you give up searching because you can't find what you're looking for. Maybe your seach terms aren't perfect. Maybe you just feel particularly sluggish/lazy that day. Who knows.

Furthermore, you also have to realize that some noobs are noobs to being noobs!! They don't even know their status! Thus, they find a friendly site like LQ.org with many answers to many questions and they jump right in! They don't yet know the proper way of going about things. Take me, for example:

Here follows an account of my GNU/Linux experience:

I got a sweet (at the time) laptop through my school for college. It came pre-loaded/pre-configured with Win98SE and M$ Office (back in 2001). That baby cruised along mighty fine for just about 18 months (the normal lifetime I have come to expect from M$ software installations before a clean re-install). She sat around all last summer at home, with the exception of my mom (that's right, my mom) trying to hook my laptop up to our home network (haha, as I recall, it was a M$ wifi hub). Well something bad happened, and when I got back to school this past fall, my laptop was useless. So I left it off for the entire semester until I broke down and decided to reformat and do a clean 98SE re-install two weeks before finals. I got fed up with windozeupdate. So I left my computer off all over winter break. I visited some family for the holiday, and witnessed my Uncle using RH 9 on his laptop, as well as heard about my cousin using GNU/Linux for the data mining company he runs. So now I have this word floating around my head . . . linux . . . linux . . . LINUX. What is it? What does it all mean? Keep in mind I have NO computer experience whatsoever (hardware, software, programming, etc.). I don't even know any programming languages. As recently as three months ago, I used "disk space" and "memory" interchangeably (what a n00B...i was so not 133t!! <---dry sarcasm, if you missed it) Well I ordered some books from Amazon, re-partitioned, installed Fedora, and got on my merry way.

Believe me, us noobs want to appear as intelligent as we are naive, and we do our best to provide as much info as we can, but being noobs, we don't have a clue what you really want (seriously, I can cat the output of a command to a file, but I still don't know how to get that file to show up in a reply on LQ.org, and there's not a snowball's chance in hell i'm typing all that out into the reply form).

Someone else said it best (forget who it was in this post) "Just suggest an answer, and maybe also suggest that for other questions, they go to www.suchandsuchaplace.domain" It's all part of the whole "give a man a fish vs. give a man a fishing pole" mantra. I guess what londonboi got, however, was a swift kick squaw in the nuts....figuratively.

If you read this far, then, like me, you are procrastinating from studying for finals, writing a term paper, writing your formal research report, etc. Keep up the good slacking...

You have made some very sensible comments that apply to all of us no matter how long we have been using Linux. There is always something we don't know or don't understand and learn everyday.

As regards the above quote here's the answer with some brief background. The switch ">" in "nix" systems tells the system to send the output to that destination. eg. to send the date to your printer date > lpt . Now in reference to the above you know that cat will interpret the file so you just use the switch to tell it what to do with the ouput. eg you want a text output of your XFree86 log file;
cat /var/log/XFree86.0.log > /home/joe/Xfree86.txt
which interprets to send the output of /var/log/XFree86.0.log to /home/joe/Xfree86.txt. Since the output is a text file it is available to post.
I came across a very good little book recently that has just been released - Linux Pocket Guide by O'Oreilly ISBN 0-596-00628-4 which is about US$9.95 and affordable for most and I have it next to me all the time and use it daily.

There's lots of free online documentation available on the Linux Documentation Project (LDP) site http://www.tldp.org/guides.html .

Just yesterday I downloaded 'Introduction to Linux - A Hands on Guide' and read a couple of chapters from the beginning. This guide is well-written and up-to-date -- should make good reading for all beginners (including myself).

hehe...hi londonboi...Mandrake 10, new kernel. Yeah I know. I started on Debian THE HARD WAY and I'm glad I did. I have a feeling you'll be back to Debian very soon. Wait till the dependency thing happens and you'll be back.
Package x depends on package y but you can't install package y because it depends on package x. Ha! PLEASE DON'T GET ME WRONG!!! I am not slamming Mandrake 10. I have it installed, too on another selectable hard drive and still mess around with it but I use Debian and that's where I'm comfortable because that's where I started.

the support guys at #creative (opensource.creative.com's channel) are great. very helpful, very friendly very polite. I've asked for help numerous times, and not only did they help me with the problem i was having, but they gave me other tips and suggestions as well. A++++ for #creative.

hehe, yeah your right,



Well i did go back to debian, yesturday in fact when i got home from uni, dependency hell got the better of me, in fact i have debian fully installed with kernel 2.6 and gnome 2.6 Compiled the kernel myself with no help from anyone.. Just having one problem tho which is having xinirama setup. I posted it here in linuxquestions but no responce as yet.

I have lots of websites with helpfull hints etc which is why i got the config file written.

But no matter how hard i search i still cannot get it working, hell i dont even know what the problem is so i dont even know what im looking for. So if anyone out there as any ideas feel free to let me know