Every community has it's newbies, the problem I see is what is done with them. I remember once reading something that directed me to
THIS page; which comes to mind now.
I don't have a problem with newbies, I deal with them regularly and stupid (snip)s as well. I do however have a problem with ignorance.
I would rather live with 10,000 newbies who don't know squat but will learn and grow as time goes, rather then 1,000 that don't know squat, don't want to know squat, and will probably never give a squat as long as things work without having to use any of the dying gray matter approximately 3ft about their asses.
Ubuntu is focused towards those new to Linux. PC-BSD, I at least consider it for those 'not used to computers'. OpenBSD, well at least if you know a fair bit about using Unix is pretty darn easy to use.
The real question is 10 years later, who has a computer problem and shouts "JUST F'ING WORK" and who sits down and tries to figure out WHY it doesn't work and HOW to fix it.
I respect effort almost as much as competence.
I've used computers since I was about 4 years old, playing games on MS-DOS 2 before I could even read, let along understand how to use the command prompt.
I was learning C++ when I stumbled onto the UNIX and Internet Fundamentals HOWTO. When I went in search of a Unix like OS about two years ago, I wanted to learn the system because of the things I read in that doc.
I found both Linux and the BSDs, after a _lot_ of research I got to feeling that the BSDs would be much more to my taste then the "Linux Distro Thing". And FreeBSD looked like it was right up my ally all the way down to the source code.
I used Knoppix Linux to see what hardware support might be like but my first installations were of FreeBSD 6.0-Release and PC-BSD 1.0RC1.
By Micro$oft's standards, I probably exceeded 'Power User' a couple of weeks after my family made the move from WebTV to an old Pentium I machine running Windows 98 around 2000/2001.
But when I booted off a Knoppix Live CD, I had not TOUCHED a command line of any sort in over a decade, even then never learned to use it. Five minutes into using konsole and a couple shells, I fell in love even though I didn't know a single thing about it.
One of my superiors at the time at a website I'm involved with, he told me to give up on figuring this stuff out but being the pig headed guy I am, I kept moving forward.
I began using the system with no prior knowledge what so ever of Unix, my only friend was the handbook and wikipedia because manual pages were still as good as written in Greek for the first month or two.
I wanted to learn more then I had to... Flash forward about two years: I can live in a command prompt, I have 3 or 4 more computers, use multiple operating systems, went from Dev-C++ to Vim and many more languages, I'm helping friends with networking issues I couldn't even comprehend before, windows is neglected to a game machine, and I'm filling webmaster shoes once held by the guy that told me to quit !
I don't expect everyone to want to learn every thing....
But I do expect, people to be willing to learn what they need to in order to do what they want/need to get done.
If you want to write a webpage but know nothing I'm fine with that. But if your not willing to *try* to figure out the basic idea of it, well don't expect me to answer with a smile ^_^
Beyond people like that, I've never had any problems with the Microsoft, Linux, or BSD communities.
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* forgive me if this is a bit OT but I wanted to reply.
*/
Quote:
Originally Posted by vermaden
3. useless dirs /opt /srv /sys
what to fsck are they for? not telling about mandatory mounted /proc because almost nothing will work without it, ok, so we have /proc so what the fsck is /sys for just for fun?
/opt mhmm we already have /usr/local or even every custom dir for every other package management like /usr/pkg or /usr/openpkg or /usr/whatever, but no lets create something new totally uncompatible like /opt it seems fun.
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I somewhat dislike the /proc thing in so far as applications and documentations that assumes _every_ system has a Linuxes /proc structure. But at least Linux didn't invent the /proc idea, just most well known for it.
/opt is defined by the FHS, to me it is largely a waste... But it can have it's uses when desired and /opt is as good a name as any 3-letter combo.
/srv is also in the FHS, a good idea IMHO. My OpenBSD system for example is configured with a /srv/<service>/<service specific files>
for example, /srv/nfs/Videos -> good as place as any to store a big file share that changes so little, it could be RO ;-). Plus it puts in it a fairly obvious place.
/srv for services is no harder to figure out then /usr/share or /var/ either ^_^
(footnote: I've been 'stuck' into using NFS, which was my last choice).