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It's only the Debian installer that's beginner-unfriendly. And even then, it requires only patience.
I assume you've not had first hand experience?
But it's irrelevant. The Windows installers are not that user friendly either. As with any installer there are pitfalls and data can be lost if the end user has no basic knowledge of partitioning, etc. The debian-installer is designed to be comprehensive and simple, but as with installing any OS it's a sysadmin's task and dressing it up with a GUI and dumbing things down doesn't change that.
Debian has gotten simpler and simpler especially since the release of Debian 6. There has been more and more "automagic" to simplify things, much of this has fed back from ubuntu or other derivatives. And yes it's much easier to install than it used to be.
I'm also Christian, but agree with this opinion that posting religious threads on a Linux forum is inappropriate--absurd, I would say.
However, I must say I was driven toward that perspective by the same behavior that makes me want to keep LQ a last resort. To wit, if members are capable of being rude in Linux-related threads, why would I ever want to participate in threads of a more controversial nature? I would expect more blatant abuse in threads on religion or politics, but I would consider it my fault to some extent for posting to them in the first place.
There is a conclusion I came to a few months ago relating to this problem. I hesitated to mention it because it's only a suspicion about some members' attitudes that would be impossible to prove. But perhaps others had the same thought--this thread is 13 pages long and I haven't even tried reading every one yet. Besides, my conclusion is fairly obvious and easy to come to.
I believe that some members see LQ as much a clubby hangout as a mere information exchange. If that's the case, it's an attitude undoubtedly endemic to all popular discussion forums. This is one of two forums I have visited for years or used to visit. The other is for my local sports team, and in that sphere of interest, the attitudes and behavior we're discussing (rudeness, excessive sarcasm, taunting, displays of arrogance) are more prevalent--much more, really; so naturally, the problem is much worse there than on LQ, and won't change, because the culture accepts it. There's no rule against treating LQ as a hangout (of course not--it's unenforceable); but it could be helpful to discourage that attitude if you want to discourage rude behavior.
I believe that some members see LQ as much a clubby hangout as a mere information exchange. If that's the case, it's an attitude undoubtedly endemic to all popular discussion forums. This is one of two forums I have visited for years or used to visit. The other is for my local sports team, and in that sphere of interest, the attitudes and behavior we're discussing (rudeness, excessive sarcasm, taunting, displays of arrogance) are more prevalent--much more, really; so naturally, the problem is much worse there than on LQ, and won't change, because the culture accepts it. There's no rule against treating LQ as a hangout (of course not--it's unenforceable); but it could be helpful to discourage that attitude if you want to discourage rude behavior.
I'm probably one of those you are talking about. Yes, I do see LQ as my social networking site. I don't want to go on Facebook or Twitter because everything I have ever heard and read about those places suggests that they are full of idiots, bullies and trolls. I like to have interesting conversations with intellectual equals and you are more likely to find them at Linux forums like this one. But I don't think that makes me more prone to ranting and taunting than most other people here.
One reason why you are likely to find more of this sort of loutish behaviour in overtly social forums may be because they are more likely to attract the sort of dim-witted people who think that kind of thing is funny or clever.
There is a conclusion I came to a few months ago relating to this problem. I hesitated to mention it because it's only a suspicion about some members' attitudes that would be impossible to prove. But perhaps others had the same thought--this thread is 13 pages long and I haven't even tried reading every one yet. Besides, my conclusion is fairly obvious and easy to come to.
I believe that some members see LQ as much a clubby hangout as a mere information exchange.
It's both.
Quote:
Originally Posted by newbiesforever
There's no rule against treating LQ as a hangout (of course not--it's unenforceable); but it could be helpful to discourage that attitude if you want to discourage rude behavior.
I think that's, in a way, similar to your comment about the social skills of programmers. The place being a hangout should have no bearing on how sugar coated/rude responses to technical questions are. I've seen far more abrasive and condescending replies and a lot more arrogance on sites which are purely "questions and answers" focused and employ the vote/up down system. These sites are much more impersonal and much more focused on point scoring.
Same goes for mailing lists, this place is warm and fuzzy by comparison to some of those.
If anything, the LQ approach provides for more of a "community" feel, which should mean new users are much more welcome.
If you're reluctant to post and have received some sharp replies in the past, well that's a shame, but I suggest that it perhaps applies to your individual case and is not an indicator that the forum as a whole has a problem.
Distribution: Currently: OpenMandriva. Previously: openSUSE, PCLinuxOS, CentOS, among others over the years.
Posts: 3,881
Rep:
Quote:
Originally Posted by ardvark71
Except when it comes to anything involving Christianity, I've noticed. Not that I consider my views strange, mind you.
Regards...
While personally I don't have any problem with people who wish to believe in Christianity (or any other faith, for that matter), I do not believe in pushing one's religious believes onto others. So saying the above quote to me is a bit like saying "you can say want you want but, Christianity is off-limits". Sorry advark71 but, you need to accept that not everyone agrees with your believes.
In genral to answer (or at least try to anyway) Jeremy's question, while I do agree that, LQ is namely a technical forum, I think there should be a forum here where by non-Linux topics should be able to be talked about. As I think it goes to the social aspect of LQ, maybe a better idea would be, that mod's can "approve" posts before they go up in the first place and/or LQ users that abuse other members in it, get banned from it instead.
If someone is using google translate that is normally easy to spot when combined with the user name
it is more some not being able to even do any basic research first
( not just here but at university also , my nephew the new Assistant prof. also sees this in the classroom)
now some of this is just not knowing WHAT to ask
so new that the terms are not familiar and the " you mean i have to TYPE!!!! " sets in
but even my Mom the mostly computer illiterate can pose a good HELP !!! question
as to solving that ???
your guess is as good as mine
you can point a horse to water but MAKE him/her drink ???????
{SOAPBOX}
Colleagues,
I will limit my remarks to all this Linux. Not every distro uses the same names, terms, words, identifiers, tokens or such for any given feature or topic. A more uniform lexicon might help those
new the Linux form questions that others might answer because they, too, understand the question.
When someone is moving from another platform they look for things that they know from that platform.
One platform treats "the C:\ Drive" as the holy grail. I've had new Linux users ask me where to find
that grail on a Linux workstation.
Another misadvanture comes from multiple uses of the same term in multiple contexts. For example,
Linux has a "root" file system, mount point, user login, and permission set. I learned about these
with AT&TŪ UnitŪ in the 1970s. I doubt many millennials can even spell "unix". They talk about all things computing with little knowledge or experience of the history or "... what's in the box ..."
I've spent hours on forums and search engines looking for answers to questions that I have.
I finally found answers when I learned that I was using the wrong search terms. Ah, Rat!?!
{/SOAPBOX}
Thanks for reading,
~~~ 0;-/ Dan
ASIDE -- I've done some sort of computing since the late 1960's. That said, even I have
the troubles that I describe above.
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