Mandrake disappointment 1772

begin doom.scr

All of which is fine as it stands, but when I post to other newsgroups he wanted to show his experience of trying linux to the mac crowd. That *so* flies in the face of his stated goal of replacing XP with Linux for people that it's just not credible. If he wanted to make a sum-up many of which contained seriously provocative commentaries.

Most of his responses were comparisons with OSX functionality, which is not relevant for an XP replacement. I saw not one single stated requirement for these so-called novice types. The term novice-type alone is not sufficient to be able to determine any requirement. Normally, when people start asking about 'could I use linux', my response is generally positive, but immediately qualified with "what do you want to do with it"? If I were buttessing an OS for a range of users, I might even have a range of needs identified, which I could enumerate. It would certainly go well beyond just "novice users".

Nowt, naturally, however, that's not what I meant. I said "didn't know much about advocacy groups", which a newbie might not know if they'd not been in one. Clearly, this doesn't follow, because sn?t has spent a lot of time in CSMA, which is demonstrated by the number of people who've followed here. Which is what those people have to do with it. I agree with you that there's clearly a history here, but there do seem to be a lot of them, and there was not a single anti-anti-sn?t posting groups suggests that my analysis of sn%t is correct.

A real newbie? I mean someone who was honestly trying to find out about a new operating system, rather than someone who was trolling, pretending to be a newbie. Afairc, the original posting (no, I've not checked just now) said something along the lines of "this linux stuff is rubbish, I can't get the ISO to boot", and then followed up quite closely with "Mac OSX is much better than this, you linux distro people need to improve your offering". I'm paraphrasing, naturally, but the meaning is pretty near.

There wasn't any "hey guys - can you help me please - I'm trying to boot this ISO, and this is what happens...?"

That would look like a normal cry for help, which I'd expect to see in a newsgroup or mailing list or even an IRC channel. The former is precisely what I'd expect to see if someone were trying to start a flamewar between CSMA and COLA. I've seen very similar posts by microsoft astroturfers doing the same thing between COLA and COMNT.

I could understand that, even, but to an advocacy group for a different OS? I'm not that dumb.

I didn't think you were, but I'm surprised that you think the level of evidence is flimsy. Personally, I think that you are being trolled, but there we go (also not trying to take the p*ss).

It seems to me that sn%t's never tried to RTFM, which is completely my point. Indeed, having been pointed to many manuals, websites, newsgroups, mailing lists, liveCDs and even invited to a LUG, the only action taken appears to be a continuum of mildly to mediumly provocative

doesn't excuse the huge amount of it before. I confess I was doing it too...

And penultimately, I've *never* seen sn't accept having made any errors or mistakes, or even show the slightest sign of contrition for anything, which also makes me thinktroll-.

And finally, his moniker - well, I could be wrong, but it's an anagram of isn't, or nearly one, anyway, which looks a look like someone having a kids is-not-is-not-is-not-is-not kind of mentality?

-- end Mark Kent -- mark at ellandroad dot demon dot co dot uk Love is the process of my leading you gently back to yourself. -- Saint Exupery