On Sat, Jan 20, 2001 at 09:08:29PM +0000, kerin wrote:

Hello I've just got my X-Chat to work, so i thought I'd see what was about, I visited a Linux Help channel, and could not believe what i saw, a guy came in asking for help with lilo he was having to use a boot disc to start his linux, and asked if anyone could tell him how to install lilo properly. What happened they totally ignored him and carried on talking to (well taking the p*** out of some bloke that wanted to record something without a pc or tape deck), after i pointed out this chap the reply was "there are hundreds or pages of help written", Its the same as taking a car to a garage and the mechanic saying to you go bye a book and repair it your self, how can the Linux world expect to encourage new users with answers like that, when with "Windows" all you have to do is look through the yellow pages and you will find someone to help you despite all the help pages that are written. Kerin

yeah, I must admit that there is a lot of this behaviour, but, at the same time, the documentation is *vast* and written *well* (as long as you hit the right docs!). I have found some of them useful but only if I *really*, *really* can't find any documentation. If you are after help 99% of the time a newsgroup is easiest, if its targetted to a single project try to see if they have there own IRC channel, I have used this approach quite a few times and have always found that it tends to work. The only real quarm I have with most of the "linux" irc channels is that they have a distinct nack of not accounting (at all) for "newbies" to IRC, for example they do put a warning in the channels topic (usually) telling you to go read the FAQs, the reason for this is that 99% of questions are answered nicely, and neatly in that FAQ. I know it sounds as if I'm defending them, and to some extent I suppose I am (I've been asked the same question repeatedly for like 6 hours, it gets *very* annoying).

Anyways, just my 2p worth,

Brett