We need a good and simple hardware database for Free Software users.

[Exile In Paradise]

On Sun, 2003-12-07 at 17:45, Arturo Duran wrote:
> Hi, exile,
> I swear I've never met you, don't know who you are,
> don't even know what you look like...

HAHAHHA, thats fixable... http://web.helixnetworks.com/~exile/
My LiveJournal icon is an extremely accurate and lifelike rendering of
what I look like :)

> I fully endorse your specific point about some people
> posting aggressive replies or comments which help in
> no way.

And I am guilty of posting just as nasty replies.

For that I apologize... please try to understand a combination of a very
annoying lockup, plus a cold, plus lack of sleep contributing a lot of
irritability to my replies.

> After spending hours on end trying to fix something in
> Linux on your box, the last thing you want is replies
> like:
> This doesn't happen to me
> (So what?)
> You must have done something wrong
> (What, if you don't mind telling?)
> You have no idea
> (Well, in that case, I am posting in the right place:
> a list to help users)
> The instructions are extremely clear
> (If I already said I read them, maybe I might just
> need some help "interpreting" them)

True...

It's also frustrating to post and never hear even a reply at all, such
as the error I still have with who -r/runlevel command returning
"unknown" or "unable to determine runlevel"... very weird.

> BTW, exile, I am not saying anything about the nVidia
> "war", but I do feel strongly about people using the
> type of answers quoted above.

Sure, and in this list, people are RIGHT for saying "you run NVidia's
binary, call NVidia" and I was *wrong* for even trying to argue at all
with it.

I was tired and cranky and shouldn't have tried to push the point. I was
being hypocritical because I was frustrated with a technical problem and
getting a legalistic answer... the same thing I do when people ask me
for help with Windows. Its been a long month with this cold.

However, the general principle still applied to a point in that
something WAS working pre-upgrade and was broken post-upgrade, which
makes supporting things like the NVidia binary driver problematic.

In a "gray-area" case like that, just a pointer to the appropriate
vendor site (to remind idiots like me who forgot to check there FIRST)
should be more than enough and would have been acceptable in my case.

That is more in line with what I was trying to say with the "try to help
then explain why you shouldn't use it it" post, which I apparently said
pretty badly, judging by the response.

What I would have preferred to see back was:

"Since you run NVidia's binary driver, you should check with their
support site rather than this community since we can't even see, much
less support, a closed source program like that. Also have you tried to
switch to the XFree NV driver shipped with Fedora to see if you still
have problems? Another solution would be to buy an ATI card, since their
drivers are open source and they support the Fedora Community much more
acceptably than NVidia does..."

To me, something like that accomplishes the simultaneous goals of trying
to provide a solution now as well as user education on the difference in
vendor support. With an answer like that, I can't see any reason
whatsoever for there to even be a need for a "war"

Thanks for responding!
-- 
Exile In Paradise
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