[sf-lug] SF-LUG meeting notes for Monday 18 March 2019

[Rick Moen]

Quoting Bobbie Sellers (bliss-sf4ever at dslextreme.com):

> I tried a bunch of Flash Drives sequentially as I have
> previously mentioned I am not installing
> to hard drives or even SSD.  Since the cannot get on line prevents
> attempting to do any
> sort of download or online information seeking at the alleged meeting

No, it doesn't.  Because there are also other people at the meeting who
can help with posting online, and also (alternatively) because you can
make a contemporaneous record of what happened and then boot to an OS
load you know works on your computer.

While you have the distro being evaluated running, open a console
terminal, collect information about the problem, and use Clipboard to
copy/paste the session into a text editor, then save that as a plaintext
file and copy it to a USB flash drive.  Then, you would have that
information stored verbatim for posting to a LUG mailing list either
during the meeting from Cafe Enchanté or later from elsewhere.

> No you fail to understand my system of: here is a system you might
> want to use, take a good look at the display and what is listed in the
> menues.  If you like it, here is the Flash Drive to take home and try
> out.

Oh, no, I fully understand that.  (Remember, I was part of the team that
invented live Linux CDs in the first place.)  What seems odd is
(seemingly) making no effort to address small problems that prevent you 
from seeing the distro to proper advantage, and with the result that
nobody learns.

> I don't run installers at the meeting, unless someone
> contacts me in advance and shows up at the meeting
> by 6 PM or 11 AM on Sundays.

OK, but failing to solve basic problems of live distros prevents you
from seeing them to proper advantage and evaluating what running them
would be like, too, so this objection really doesn't address what I was
saying.

And, if you were imagining that it's impractical to install a KDE them
on a live distro, no, it should not be difficult, because the changes
should land in the running RAMdisk rather than on the read-only image.
(Of course, they would not be persistent unless you took additional
steps.)

>     Yes as the backend to Synaptic.
>     The use of apt is discouraged.

Well, don't listen to that, as it's not in your interest to heed that
bad advice.

> Not on your life.

Then, you'll basically never get effective help unless someone is
willing to do housecalls, and good luck with that.

The most important reasons to collect and post information from basic
command-line tools:

1.  Because they don't conceal error output.
2.  Because they permit you to show verbatim and consecutively what
    happened.
3.  Because they're much closer to universal.  (Nobody who uses 
    an apt-based distribution is going to install Synaptic solely
    to replicate what you describe.)

Without verbatim data, helpers are basically blind to what you
experience, and reliant solely on the user's (usually after the fact)
descriptions, which despite best intentions will always omit 
important details and include inaccuracies.  So, it's common to 
see helpers who've been around to learn these facts say 'Sorry to 
hear you're having a problem.  Please post again with verbatim 
console results showing the problem so we can see it and help you.'

If you as a person encountering problems decline to collect relevant
data for helpers, then you'll get sympathy but in general not be able to
get assistance.

And your debugging technique will remain 'I booted this distro and
couldn't Web-browse, so I gave up.'


> The instructions I gave above present you with a quandary You cannot
> update to the newer package until the older package is deleted by
> Synaptic and the update ilists the new version of LibreOffice as a
> dependency of  libreoffice-openclipart 6.2-1pclos2019 and refuses to
> install.

The link I sent in the prior posting suggested that you should leave the
matter up to lomanager rather than trying to use Synaptic.

I'm not a PCLinuxOS user, so I cannot evaluate that suggestion, but the
fellow purported to know the distro-local customs and was an
administrator of that PCLinuxOS-specific forum.

> 23 minutes is long enough to wait for my breakfast while I
> reply to your lengthy screed.

Wow, that was pretty ungracious, but I'm certainly not offended.  And
since you bring that up, I'm not voting so much to help _you_ as to 
continue the community process, which includes helping people learn how
to solve technical problems.  Of course, if I'm able to help you as
well, that makes me particularly happy, so I really _do_ help what I
wrote helps.

-- 
Cheers,              "I am a member of a civilization (IAAMOAC).  Step back
Rick Moen            from anger.  Study how awful our ancestors had it, yet
rick at linuxmafia.com  they struggled to get you here.  Repay them by appreciating
McQ! (4x80)          the civilization you inherited."           -- David Brin