Requirements Checklist for Choosing a Cloud Backup and Recovery Service Provider
Help with Help
When things go wrong - with any operating system - we panic. A healthy response: operating systems are complex machines that take a lot more understanding than we typically have time for. Linux, together with its associated applications and utilities, has the advantage of having been put together by extremely clueful people, many of whom are available on the Web, on forums, newsgroups or directly approachable by email.
That 'About Xfce' dialogue box we mentioned last time, for example, lists Xfce creator Olivier Fourdan's email address, along with the email addresses of the leading members of the Xfce development team. So you can drop a line to the man himself about any Xfce problems you encounter. In fact, in the early days of Xfce I did just that, and you can too.
But don't. At least not until you've read How to Ask Questions the Smart Way, which will urge you to exhaust other channels of information first. To quote Smart Way, Linux cognoscenti "have a reputation for meeting simple questions with what looks like hostility or arrogance. It sometimes looks like we're reflexively rude to newbies and the ignorant. But this isn't really true".
Smart Way is written by a couple of dyed-in-the-wool old Open Source hackers, so they would say that, wouldn't they? But hear them out: "What we are, unapologetically, is hostile to people who seem to be unwilling to think or to do their own homework before asking questions. People like that are time sinks - they take without giving back, and they waste time we could have spent on another question more interesting and another person more worthy of an answer. We call people like this 'losers' (and for historical reasons we sometimes spell it 'lusers')."
Smart Way is a lengthy read - hackers tend to be very thorough - but definitely worth it if you're a newbie questing into hacker territory in search of answers. Where, by the way, you'll be more than welcome, as long as you observe the mores. A good rule of thumb is to spend at least as much time thinking about and putting together your question as you would reasonably expect your responding hacker(s) to spend putting together an answer.
Next page: Bouncy Windows and other Visual Delights
COMMENTS
@Outcast
Great point well made... I stand corrected Sir! Cracked a smile at that one... but then I wondered rhetorically… which distro are we talking about? ;-)
Still, what has begladdened this tired old soul is how the ever increasing popularity of Linux has gotten the incumbent big boy to raise his game: Windows 7 Beta has impressed so far as I have it running “more snappily” than XP on an old, slow Pentium M ultraportable, and it essentially looks and acts like Vista, so they must’ve cut a whole heap of the fat bloat out of that OS. A pity they didn’t do it two years ago and left it to the end user to trim their own OS! Much like the current hot topic of evolution on this anniversary of our hallowed Darwin’s birth, Linux for the desktop environment at this particular time found some attractive traits that made it desirable, and MS had to evolve new traits in the never ending battle for resource, or the user base in this case. If they succeed in regaining their lead then Linux will up their game again which can only be a good thing…
I really do hope
that Mark here doesn't work in technical support.
Or if he does, the poor users have found someone else to help them.
@Mark
"Well, if you really want to know, how about we reverse it? Does *nobody* in the *world* *anywhere* want Compiz, even if it doesn't have to be a portable device?"
Reductio ad absurdum isn't exactly a debate technique that adults use, outside government, religion and conspiracy theorists.
My questions are still valid, as are my points that glitter doesn't get anything done, and gets in the way of battery life and eats CPU, which will be especially noticeable in a low power portable.
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