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  • From: Andrew <afrayedknot AT thefrayedknot.armory.com>
  • To: sm-discuss AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [SM-Discuss] expectations of users
  • Date: Mon, 1 Dec 2003 09:22:51 -0800

Maybe this is all obvious, but I'll lay it all out as I see it anyway.

[short version]
we appeal to two groups of people. Those that know linux, know what
they are doing and want their system the way they want it, and those
that want to be that way (some of the newbies). The rest of the newbies
we cant really help, they want things to work and be setup and so forth
and if it doesnt work, we are supposed to fix it for them.

One of our strengths is that our irc channel is a friendly fun place for
people to show up to. I'd hate to see it turn into an unfriendly channel
full of jaded developers like what other distro channels have turned into.

As long as we have an influx of newbies who _want_ to learn, I say we help
them as much as can be expected. The other newbies who dont want to put in
any effort and want their system handed to them on a silver platter, well
lets not be rude, but kindly show them the door, and explain that this
isnt for everyone, a certain level of time and effort has to be given.

Sourcemage is a great distro to learn on, lets not ignore the people
who just haven't learned yet.

[long version]

For me, after 4 months of serious linux use (as opposed to installing
redhat and using it for a few days then giving up and going back to
windows), I stepped into sorcerer/sourcemage and had no problem. But
that may be a special case.

I tend to divide people into 3 groups:

The original audience was system administrators. I have however been
unsuccessful and persuading any sys-admins to actually use it. The
main gripe being that its 'un-supported' by industry. Basically a large
portion of the high end server industry thinks that linux is completely
interchangable with redhat. That being said if a sys-admin decided to
swap to something else, most of their support would go out the door. If
their system breaks and they arent running a supported version of redhat,
even if everything relavent is the same, its the admins fault, not the
manufacturer.

Next in line are people mostly like us. Most of us, if we are willing to
admit it, went through some logical equivalent of a larval stage[1]. Linux
is no longer big and scary and confusing. Compiling something from source
code, by hand, and doing it right the first time is something most of
us can do. We can edit almost any file in /etc ourselves. We grok the
file tree hierarchy and know what basically all the main directories are
for. That being said most of us could become professional sys-admins in
the real world if we wanted to. Its for this group of people that I've
seen sourcemage really shine.

Finally there is the large class of newbies. These people have either
just started going into larval stage or havent gotten that far yet. They
aren't entirely comfortable with things like how source gets built,
or how to configure a mail server or ftp server. Some of them are willing
to learn, others arent. Some of them are okay with having their box
broken, either through their fault or someone elses. These people are
happy to delve into the depths of linux and get their hands dirty,
often without anyone else helping them, because they know that when
they're done, they'll have a new understanding for how things work, and
be better at it next time. Other people are terrified of things breaking,
or having anything go wrong.

As the case may be, the majority of new nicks that I see on irc are
newbies. Most of them want to learn more about linux. Sourcemage is
perfect for them. Its open and easy to get your hands into, there arent
10 layers of crufty config files and config tools between you and the
binaries. Maybe its just me, but I've seen a lot of newbies interests
piqued when they hear about that. It certainly got me. I was sick of
redhat, and all the extra crap thats thrown in.

Theres the other group of new faces that I see that want to have their
cake and eat it too. They are sick of redhat, and say they want to get
a real linux system going. But when anything breaks, they head for the
hills and give us bad press, and say we suck, and ask us stupid questions
on irc.

At the risk of being flamed, I think this last group makes up a lot of
the /. crowd. If we get /.ed a lot of those people will think smgl is
cool and want to try it, but heaven forbid they have to get out of their
comfort zone of windows XP. Some of those people will be the adventurous
newbies. Some of whom will become gurus. Some of them will be post larval
geeks like us, who will settle in nicely for a time.

As much as I like helping newbies into smgl (the one activity i have
had time for in the past 3 months), some people you just aren't going
to win, and some will bail once something goes wrong, or expect us to
fix it for them. Which is sad, but we really can't blame ourselves.

I think that so long as someone is actually willing to learn, get their
hands dirty, and be adventurous, we encourage and help them to take up
smgl. If they say they are, but dont walk the walk, then thats their
agenda, and as much as I want them to use our distro they ought to go
back to redhat until they're ready.

Our irc channel is a great place to hang out. Every day or two I'll
get to sell smgl to a newbie. Sometimes they come back, sometimes they
dont. Sometimes they dont come back because they know what they are doing,
like smgl and their IP address shows up on my fallback mirror. Some
of them dont come back because we just aren't for them, and they know
it. Some still come back, hang out and do their best to keep up, they
often go unnoticed, or unappreciated. Then theres that group that comes
back and wants help, and isnt willing to work things for themselves. We
can only help them so far, and that the way it goes. I say we show them
the door as nicely as possible.

You cant put time restricitions on these things. Their attitude will answer.

Bottom line is. We shouldn't stop helping newbies. We shouldn't get all
jaded like some other channels, the ones we can help, we should help, the
rest of them, show them the door, nicely. If you're having trouble with
that, go have a beer, relax, keep up the good work, take a break from tech
support, come back when you're ready. The rest of us will cover for you


Sorry for the long post, but our strength and potential growth is in
the newbies, not sys-admins. Sourcemage is a great distro to learn on,
if you really want to learn.

Sorry for the long, long post.

[1] http://www.catb.org/~esr/jargon/html/L/larval-stage.html

--
________________________________________________________________________
|Andrew D. Stitt | astitt AT sourcemage.org |
|irc: afrayedknot | afrayedknot AT t.armory.com |
|aim: thefrayedknot or iteratorplusplus | |
|Grimoire Guru ham/smgl, Porting Team Lead | ftp://t.armory.com |
|Author and Maintainer of Prometheus | |
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