Re: [tlug] linux@example.com How many widely can we do that?

[Niels Kobschätzki <n.kobschaetzki@example.com>]

On Oct 25, 2009, at 4:06 PM, Attila Kinali wrote:

> On Sun, 25 Oct 2009 15:43:42 +0100
> Christian Horn <chorn@example.com> wrote:
>
> > "What happens when you read some doc and either it doesn't answer
> > your question or is demonstrably wrong? In Linux, you say 'Linux
> > sucks' and go read the code. In Windows/Oracle/etc you say 'Windows
> > sucks' and start banging your head against the wall."
> >       -- Denis Vlasenko on lkml
> >
> > Pretending both OSs are equally good equipped for a given work-
> > load (and i think for mine linux is better equipped) one still
> > has a better chance with an OpenSourced OS to shed out problems.
>
> But how many people who use a computer in their daily life can
> read code? How many of those who can are able to understand such
> complex code as it is commonly found on unixoid systems?
>
> Your argument that one has a better chance to solve any given
> problem on a OSS system is void for 99% of the world population.

Use FreeBSD which has a great documentation (and I think Gentoo is the  
same).
Still I would guess that at least 80% of computer-users world wide  
would never read the documentation anyway…
Can't count the baffled faces of people when I tell them that I am  
reading the documentation of products I use. And I would say that I am  
a power-user but not a developer at all and if I encounter a problem I  
rarely read the code. If it's beyond re-compiling and changing minimal  
stuff I'm out (trying to get a driver on OS X to re-compile for 64-Bit  
and I am already failing at this even though it shouldn't be that hard).
Good documentation is worth a lot but in my experience most of the  
people do not even think about googling for a problem or read the  
documentation (and googling will solve problems faster for Linux/BSD/ 
OSX usually than it will solve your Windows-problems).

The main problem imho is not the documentation or if code is readable  
or not but your imminent "community". Most of the people know how to  
switch on a computer and work with a handful of programs. Anything  
beyond that is out of their reach and they don't want to fiddle with  
that because they do not even really know for what they would have to  
search. Therefore I always suggest Linux or OS X to people if they ask  
me what to get, but in the same time I ask them if they have friends  
who know either of those two to help them with problems or if they  
think they are able to help themself.

Niels

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