NM: the usual rant

[Timothy Murphy]

Ed Greshko wrote:

>>> I agree that it's great if users look at logs and send them to
>>> technicians when appropriate.  My point is just that if they don't
>>> understand them, don't want to look them up, and don't want to report
>>> the issue to someone who will, then they should just ignore the logs and
>>> stop complaining.
>>> >> You seem to have a bizarre view of Linux.
>> To my mind Linux, and in particular Fedora, is about learning,
>> not about sending problems to "technicians".
>>
>> If I shared your view I would use another operating system. 

> So, are you saying that (in your mind) Linux is only for people who wish
> to learn about the O/S?  
> So, it shouldn't be used by an end-user that
> just wants a system to work?

Unfortunately, I don't think Fedora - which I explicitly mentioned -
is a good OS to recommend to someone who just wants a system to work.
I wish it were, but you would have to be blind to reality to believe it is.

I think someone who just wanted a system that works,
and wasn't willing to experiment and read about the system,
would find Fedora very frustrating.

But I was replying to a poster who said, in effect,
that "ordinary users" should not bother with logs
but should just send them to "technicians" if they had a problem.

My view is that logs should be intelligible to the interested user,
and developers should make some effort to make them intelligible,
in particular by documenting what they mean (eg in NM)
by "state2 -> state 3", etc.

I don't really understand the attitude of the NM developers
to documentation.
I would have thought anyone who had put in that much time
in developing an application would want to explain to people
how best to use it.

> So, I really should tell my 86yr old dad to stop using Linux?

It's not a matter of age, it's a matter of attitude and temperament.
Many 80-year olds are eager to learn.
Many 20-year olds only want to get from A to B.


-- 
Timothy Murphy  
e-mail: gayleard /at/ eircom.net
tel: +353-86-2336090, +353-1-2842366
s-mail: School of Mathematics, Trinity College, Dublin 2, Ireland