[sf-lug] didn't try to solve ... (was: Re: SF-LUG meeting notes for Monday 18 March 2019)

[Rick Moen]

Quoting aaronco36 (aaronco36 at SDF.ORG):

> OTOH, sometimes or even fairly often, those (we) user "person(s)'
> first impressions/experiences" are simply not reported to others
> other than in gripe sessions such as one or more people even on this
> very list may have done. Also, there is what a very few such as
> myself might call the Dampering Effect whereby someone reveals their
> first impressions of distros based upon criteria X,Y, or Z (X,Y,Z
> maybe = ease of WiFi setup, ability to set up acceptable/optimal
> graphics, ability to acceptably/optimally set up other hardware and
> apps, basic "look-and-feel",...etcetera) and then someone swoops in
> to essentially _invalidate_ their first impressions.

Observing that the commenter seems, on available evidence, to have
missed important things, or (e.g., with Debian Stable) was looking in an
obviously wrong place for what he/she wanted to find, is (far as I can
tell) not a lot like invalidating that commenter's first impressions.

On a related matter, a quick check shows that Bobbie's been a regular
here for twelve years.  And, from the beginning (early 2007), no sign of
any deeper interest in Linux than distro tourism, IMO, not that there's
anything wrong with that.  Not at all.  I guess that just works for
Bobbie, then.

I _did_ find really amusing her bit about how I shouldn't wish she
collected diagnostic data on problems she experienced from the command 
line because of pervasive typos, for two reasons:  (1) Bobbie
consistently makes quite a lot fewer typos than I do.  Also, more
tellingly, if Bobbie had used the bash shell even a tiny bit over the
course of her decade-plus of Linux tire-kicking, she'd have known that
bash's command-completion makes even a fairly severe tendency towards 
typos (which she obviously does _not_ suffer, contrary to what she said)
very close to a non-problem.

So, I conclude that Bobbie not only prefers to stick strictly in
soothing graphical application-land, but also has avoided bash _so_
completely as to not even be familiar with its very best and most famous
(and most useful) feature, and instead talks a lot about how she didn't
like the command line on AmigaOS, which was nothing like bash.  (Not
that bash command-completion solves all typing challenges:  That's
beside the point.)


> And also such users (a humble admission of yours truly) will just
> Take the Lazy Way Out (not TM'd) and refuse to spend any more
> further time analyzing and troubleshooting the actual
> Devil-in-the-Details reasons why they/we cannot get factors X,Y, or
> Z working optimally.

To be sure:  Just deciding to bag it with a frustrating OS and try
something else can be a totally reasonable and pragmatic solution -- and 
there's nothing wrong with it.  You might decide that, in a given
situation, changing tactics is probably going to save time on balance,
and decide that you just don't care enough about the solution to spend
more time on it (and hope you never end up facing the same roadblock and
regret your choice).  It's a judgement call.