[conspire] running without a DE- ancilliary tools? [was Re: (forw) Re: InstallFest on Apr. 13th]

[Rick Moen]

Quoting Tony Godshall (togo at of.net):

> And indeed I had done some, and got a bit stuck.  I've learned to use
> iwconfig and arping and nmap and have fought with network-manager and
> wpa-supplicant.  I've tried to read convoluted code and backed away.
> Perhaps you'd have preferred if I'd have spelled all that out.

Because those of us who do online help are at some risk of getting surly
and cynical, especially when busy and tired, it is sometimes handy to
briefly summarise what you've already tried in your own investigations
before asking others for help.  No obligation; it just shows you did
some of the basics.  (That also might help others avoid chewing up time
looking into those same basics.)

I was a little more than usually at risk for being surly and cycnic this
busy Tuesday mid-morning, because my mother-in-law had woken me early,
out of a very pleasant sleep, saying 'Rick, I think we need to do
something.  The freezer's melted.'  As it turned out, her notion of 'we'
did not include herself:  She offered no help whatsoever at any point
over the next hour, and instead stood intermittantly in my way and asked
me poorly thought-out, interfering questions as I was trying to carry
out corrective pragmatic actions.

So, I can perhaps be forgiven a little cynicism when faced shortly
thereafter with someone asking me[1] questions on a very busy workday 
while showing absolutely no sign of having done any investigation
himself.  And, worse, _then_ attempting to guilt-trip me for
insufficiently assisting unidentified GNOME and KDE users who are not in
evidence and who are not in any obvious way my problem to begin with.

[1] Protest all you want that you were intending to address your query
to the mailing list generally and not particularly at me, but that is
rather disingenuous when you were responding to and quoting my upthread
postings.  So, sorry, no, you were pretty much primarily asking me.