1237ca939b35
tech



Hello Roy - 

WC>> Hope to get back to Linux soon but it may be some time due
WC>> to current difficulties unrelated to hardware. 

CA>> If you watch ongoing discussions about Linux you will see
CA>> that Linux continues to change (and bloat in the process)
CA>> adding Plug-and-Play where the earlier versions required
CA>> manual editing. 

RJT> Where are you referring to here? 

I don't understand your question "where". 

CA>> If you fall more than two 'distros' behind and need help
CA>> you are most likely going to be told that everyone has
CA>> newer 'distros' and what you can't edit with the proper
CA>> values is automated for them. 

RJT> While it may be that some of the newer stuff is handling
RJT> things in a more automatic way than the earlier stuff did,
RJT> you always do have the option to overrride, or go in and
RJT> manually edit things to make them the way you want. 

The existence of that option does not automatically indicate
how many use that option. 

CA>> Even what I consider a very basic function to dialup an
CA>> ISP and connect (PPPDial) gets few replies from people who
CA>> have not had to manually edit the configuration for PPP in
CA>> a long time and don't really care anymore how it works or
CA>> why it does not work when it does not. I was stonewalled
CA>> for several weeks just because of a non-standard dialup
CA>> and the need to put the 'older' original files and
CA>> binaries in it's place using Linux SlackWare v3.5. 

CA>> The guy who thought he was 'slick' enough to repackage
CA>> SlackWare v3.5 into a mini install wasn't slick enough to
CA>> figure out how to put back the standard PPPDial files and
CA>> get them configured properly. 

RJT> You expected that person to cover all eventualities? 

The standard PPPDialer is not "all eventualities", it is a
standard. He admitted to me in email that he had a shell
account and had never tested his PPP login using EZNET because
he had no way to test it. He did _not_ admit to this in any
public forum and instead proclaimed me to be a fool because I
could not get EZNET to work and the author of EZNET refused to
even try to help. 

CA>> It all began to remind me of Windows users who are on top
CA>> of the world as long as everything autoinstalls and are
CA>> totally lost when their network card suddenly disappears
CA>> from the setup or their printer/scanner/whatever stops
CA>> working. They never actually set it up in the first place
CA>> and have no idea where to even begin testing to find the
CA>> problem. Usually they reinstall _all_ of Windows until it
CA>> fixes itself. :-) 

CA>> I've seen the same thing happen with Linux users. They
CA>> reinstall and let the 'distro' try to figure it all out.

RJT> Heh. 

CA>> I'm not saying I'm smarter than they are or that I could
CA>> manually install everything myself. I'm only saying this
CA>> is what we have come to and like it or not by the time you
CA>> could really understand a version of Windows or Linux your
CA>> version would be obsolete by several multiples and you
CA>> would be forced to re-learn and start over again. 

RJT> Things change, but not _that_ much. 

They do if you rely on the GUI which many Linux users and _all_
Windows users do rely on. 

CA>> Not 100% but enough that the chase is eternal at this
CA>> point we can only search out just so much information per
CA>> day and since others aren't even trying to find the
CA>> information don't expect a great deal of help either. :-\ 

RJT> I think, in part, that this is the nature of what we're
RJT> dealing with here. Things keep moving along, at an ever-
RJT> increasing pace, and getting more complicated, and it
RJT> isn't going to slow down at any time soon. 

If I had a 300 IQ and began producing robots that were
comparable to humans but no one other than myself was ever able
to fix/adjust one when it was required what would be the point? 

At some point programming has to allow the _users_ some degree
of control and time to do something productive before we all go
back to the 'novice' stages and start over again. Just my
opinion YMMV. 

RJT> Software, whether it's an operating system or an
RJT> application, is trying to take things to higher levels of
RJT> abstraction, and remove some of these things from the
RJT> average user needing to deal with all those messy details
RJT> that you used to _have to_ deal with. 

You may not realize it but you have paraphrased Bill Gates
reasoning when users complained about Windows versions. ;-) 

RJT> At least in the case of linux, I have the choice to dive
RJT> in there and deal with some of those details, if I want to
RJT> or need to for some reason. 

Based on my own expriences manaully editing the Windows
registry to reset the configuration is no more mysterious than
reading manpages and trying to sort out Linux. Neither is easy
and the odds for success seem more-or-less equal so far. ;-) 

These are not things 'average' users ever intend to do if they
can avoid it. 

>
>        ,                          ,
>      o/      Charles.Angelich      \o       ,
>       __o/
>     / >          USA, MI           < \   __\__
 

___ * ATP/16bit 2.31 * 
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