Re: [linux-audio-user] icky low level linux stuff

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Subject: Re: [linux-audio-user] icky low level linux stuff
From: Paul Winkler (pw_lists_AT_slinkp.com)
Date: Sun Jul 28 2002 - 23:41:08 EEST


On Sat, Jul 27, 2002 at 08:09:33PM -0700, Joseph Zitt wrote:
> Paul Winkler wrote:
> > I suppose a fair number of them have had the experience of
> > increasingly frequent crashes, services that stop working
> > unexpectedly, hours on hold with tech support people who prove to have
> > no clue what the problem is, and the final frustrating advice to
> > reinstall the system from scratch without ever identifying the source
> > of the problem.
>
> Actually, a good number of them have not experienced these. They're not
> particularly adventurous with their systems, and rarely upgrade things.
> They consider the computer to be a tool to get certain tasks done, and
> it does it for them.

Yes... that's very nice when it works. It works pretty often.
I have to say that all of my easiest, smoothest hardware installations
have been on Mac OS. Plug in the printer, stick the disk in the drive,
click "OK" once or twice... hey, what do you mean I'm done? :)

Windows has been much more variable in my experience. Sometimes a
breeze... Then there was the time I tried to get DSL working with a brand-new
Dell desktop system. No dice. A total of about 15 hours on the phone
with Dell tech support and Verizon tech support yielded no
working net connection, and no clear understanding of what was wrong.
Finally, during a conference call with *both* companies' tech support,
we decided to reinstall the OS from scratch. Problem solved.
The cause of the problem was never determined. In the 5 years I've
been running linux, I've never had a single problem that wasted that
much of my time (except one catastrophic disk failure, which I somehow
suspect Windows wouldn't have handled any better.) Connecting my
"unsupported" linux machine to that same DSL provider took me
all of half an hour; I did a google search, found many references
to rp-pppoe, installed the RPM, read the config instructions, edited
a couple config files according to the instructions, and presto.

> > Yes, but when your car breaks, you take it to a mechanic and
> > they charge you hundreds of dollars to fix it. If you don't
> > want to do that, you have to know a lot about cars.
>
> Yes, but cars break relatively rarely. I don't find myself spending
> hours each day trying to figure out why my car won't let me turn left
> when the radio is on :-)

True. But you also don't try to use your car for as many different
purposes as a computer. It drives; you can put people and things in it;
that is all. You can't install "Boat 4.0" and "Airplane 0.9-beta"
and suddenly have different modes of transportation available :)

So maybe it's not a very good analogy.

> > If you don't want to pay someone to fix your linux system for you,
> > you have to learn how to fix it yourself - with help online of course.
> > What more could you expect? A system that never breaks, never
> > needs configuring, and anticipates your every desire?
> > No such thing.
>
> None exists. But we could be closer.

Yes indeed. We do make progress... slowly, slowly, slowly...

-- 

Paul Winkler home: http://www.slinkp.com "Muppet Labs, where the future is made - today!"


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