The other day I was pruning unwanted services and I came across Fuse. The description in system-config-services was vague, so I went to the Fuse web page, which left me in the embarrassing situation of still not knowing if I needed it

After I'd switched it off, I found a site on configuring services that said it should be left on. So far nothing's happened, but will nasty things eventually come and get me if leave it off?

"Use the Wiki, Luke" :-)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FUSE_%28Linux%29

The Wiki article does not tell me whether I need it.

When you post replies that are not answers, you remove the OP from the list of unanswered questions, and so reduce the probability of it getting answered. Why do I have to keep making this point to people?

mjlouis assumed that you would use common sense...after I read the wiki I came to the conclusion that I don't need it. Yes, the Wiki article doesn't tell you if you need it...but with a little brain power you can figure it out...

From the Wiki:
Will you be using ZFS? NTFS-3G? SSHFS? If the answer is "yes" then you will need it.

(BTW, thanks, custangro!

I'm not sure I understand. I did post a reply that was "Hey, perhaps this might help" - it wasn't an exact answer (as in "Here's exactly what you need") but I thought it might help you.

Perhaps this will help:
If you're not using Linux in a work environment, but are just using it at home then you probably don't need FUSE. If you're not suffering a case off geek-itus and you don't need to play around with FUSE then you certainly don't need it and you can safely ignore/disable it.

On the other hand, if you don't know what FUSE is and are interested in learning about it...well, I think I can point you to a wiki page that will help you learn more about it.

Knowing whether anything on the computer is liable to generate a virtual filing system may be common sense to a RHCE, but it isn't to me, any more than understanding the uses of Hieroglyph B1 as a mater lectionis would be to you

But thanks for your answer: Fuse can obviously go.

I'm not an RHCE...or arsey *grin*
(http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=arsey)

I'd really recommend that you install virtualbox and a copy of <distro of choice>; then you can do whatever you want. You can break it, make it unusable and just reinstall and go again. I don't care what you do inside that play environment as long as you learn from when things fo *foom!*

At least they won't go *foom!* in your face. :-)

[Oh, and as for Hieroglyph B1...well, I never knew the ancient Egyptians had such good aircraft :-)]

In the interests of making myself unpopular with both sides of this debate

It should be apparent that this doesn't help much. If you can state 'it said that you need it if...' or 'here is the URL (read it yourself)' then people have the chance of making a constructive comment on what the site actually says, but what you have said is hardly any more than 'there is a rumour by someone who probably doesn't know (my exageration) that I need it'.

You haven't really given anyone the option of analysing your particular requirement and commenting either.

I can understand that response: there is a tendency round here of people to ask for someone else to do their googling for them. That the OP in this case wasn't in the category of people who did this seems to have been overlooked, but with such a lot of it going on, I can understand the error being made.

Errm, yes, but...I don't see how anyone could read the original posting and do any better, whatever it turned out that Fuse was good for. If you had wanted someone to analyse your situation and tell you whether you needed it, more detail would have clearly been required (even if you were unsure what detail that would have been). Now clearly further questions could, and probably should, be asked, but the position of posting insufficient information and wondering why people didn't somehow guess the rest is untenable.

Here is what I think is the problem; many of us have come up the old way in our use of computers; trapped in a air conditioned room with a big binder, or a shelf of binders and a computer that has to do something in particular that we don't (yet) understand how to do. We expect a certain amount of hair-tearing and mindlessly hitting one object with another because we seem to have run out of other options, before we get to an answer. Other people expect to do less figuring out for themselves and more asking for an answer.

You can't say that one way is right and the other is wrong, but it does lead to a mismatch of expectations..

If you have to keep making that point, maybe you need to think about your question asking technique http://www.linuxquestions.org/linux/...Ask_a_Question. People round here certainly can be quirky, but they usually start off with a default position of wanting to help.

100% agree.

BUT...if you come on here with attitude I'm going to give attitude.

If the OP would have said something along the lines of "I read the wiki but I am still a little confused about X"...THAT would've been different...

Right or wrong (I don't really care); if I detect attitude I'm giving it back.

I wasn't aware that my OP showed any attitude, other than curiosity. I simply couldn't see what Fuse was wanted for, so I couldn't tell if I would ever need it. My original objective was just to speed things up by killing off unwanted services, but (although I always insist on being a computer user rather than a hobbyist) I got sidetracked into perfectionist mode.

In fact, turning it off has produced a strange result. The Gnome tool reports it as disabled but running! Sure enough, ps lists gvfs_fuse_daemo but chkconfig lists fuse as off in all run-levels. The same situation applies to wpa_supplicant.

My dad once said, in response to what was probably a smart-ass remark from me to a serious question from him, "Son, we have fists in our voices, just like we have fists in our hands. No matter which fists we approach someone with, we're likely to get fists back." Later in that same conversation he added, "Try to hear our words with the other person's ears a beat or two before they leave our mouths. If we can feel anger, embarrassment, or pain, then maybe we should never let them go."
Sage advice which I try to follow, though I confess that at the time, I just rolled my eyes.
Reading this thread from the start, I seem to sense 'fists' in both of the posts which seem to have started this exchange.
Just an observation to consider......

owa