[sf-lug] debian vs ubuntu question

[Rick Moen]

Quoting Michael Paoli (Michael.Paoli at cal.berkeley.edu):

> Yes, ... not to mention questions (or at least initial such) being
> pretty dang broad and potentially ambiguous ... and also nothing
> stated about the reason/objective of the question, or what was trying to
> be determined.

I'm hazarding a strong guess that the answer to those mysteries lies in
Jim's recent problems, covered in this space, with wireless
functionality breaking on the Ubuntu preload on his ZaReason laptop.

Jim kept, IIRC, being concerned about spontaneous breakage.  (At first,
he seemed to be convinced it was a hardware problem until Bobbie posted
details of her own efforts to help that _obviously_ ruled out that
possibility.)  I'm about 99% sure what we're seeing here is Jim
asking-without-explicitly-saying-so 'Given that Ubuntu 18.04 LTS
spontaneously broke its wireless configuration on my laptop, is it
possible that distro-hopping to Debian would prevent this recurring?'
This presupposes that Ubuntu did that -- which I very strongly doubt.

Anyway, over the years I've become justifiably wary of questions on LUG
mailing lists that seem oddly stripped of context.  Often they are 
based on wacky assumptions that are just not true, and the smartest
course of action is to find some polite way to inquire 'Hey, what is
this _really_ about?'

The price of not doing that is that you answer theoretical questions and
(in effect) fail to give good advice because the _real_ issue wasn't
addressed.  And I long ago got tired of those wastes of time.

> I suppose I might've guessed that too, in the somewhat broader list
> context and recent postings ... but, alternatively, I took the posting
> as relatively standalone, and responded to it as it was.

Yeah, you see, I'm pretty sure that doesn't help Jim, because he was
asking the wrong question, based on a mistaken fundamental assumption.



> Sure - can still be determined.  Did an entire full image backup before
> shipping the laptop off, right?  Right?  

We can dream.  ;->

> Hmmm, didn't ZaReason include DVD (or CD) of the distro you had them
> originally install, so you could reinstall from that?

We know that they pretty much certainly did, _and_ we know that Jim
attended multiple SF-LUG meetings where he most certainly could have
either borrowed or copied Bobbie's or other members' ISOs -- and yet
obviously he choose not to reinstall.  I for one recommended he do so if
elementary steps to fix his installation for some reason didn't work.  I
believe I used the expression 'Fish or cut bait' about that.  To which
Jim made no reply, and I infer that he rejected the advice.

Given that surmise about his decision to _not_ reinstall his OS but
rather ship his laptop across the country so that ZaReason would do that
for him, I didn't bother suggesting _again_ that he reload his OS.
Obviously, Jim already decided against that.

Some people just want vendors to do things.  Can't help people do their
own work if they've decided not to do that.