On Tue, 18 Oct 2011 10:20:58 +0100, Invisible wrote:

>> "I don't know of anybody who's using it yet."
>>
>> I'm using it.  In a VM.  So there's one. ;)
> 
> There's always one. ;-)
> 
> No, seriously. I'm not saying nobody on Earth is using it. I'm sure
> people are. I just said that not /many/ people are using it yet. I
> imagine that will gradually change over time.

Every new PC that ships with Windows ships with it.  While some 
manufacturers are dropping PC lines, they still make enough money selling 
kit.

>> When I'm giving technical interviews, you might recall, I ask questions
>> I know the candidate doesn't stand a chance of asking.  The reason I do
>> this is to find out how they learn beyond their current skill.
> 
> That's kind of evil. I'm not sure how somebody sitting in an interview
> chair is supposed to solve a problem right there on the spot. I mean,
> it's not like they can go away and look stuff up...

I don't ask them to solve it.  I ask *how* they would solve it, and what 
resources they would use.

It's real-life.  If a system is down, the candidate will need to actually 
fix it and leverage what resources are available to them.  If I recommend 
someone be hired, I don't want them to freeze when a system goes down and 
they're the only one available to fix it.  I want them to be resourceful, 
and that's something you have to figure out before you make an offer.

Hiring people is expensive.  Hiring the wrong person is much *more* 
expensive.

>> You seem to think there's no point in asking questions to learn more.
>> That's troubling.  You *have* the ability to learn, and you seek out
>> information when it suits you.  But at the same time, you declare
>> something as "impossible"
> 
> If I wanted to know how to live forever, I wouldn't bother posting a
> question in an online forum. You know why? Because... it's...
> impossible. It's not that I don't know how, it's that IT CANNOT BE DONE.

But if you want to know how to configure Apache on Linux, *that is NOT 
impossible*.  Clearly.  People have done it.  A significant portion of 
the web's web servers actually run that configuration.

So why wouldn't you bother asking a question in an online forum in that 
instance?

> Now with software we're dealing with somewhat less absolute quantities.
> I gather that if you read Linux From Scratch, it actually directs you to
> where you can download the source code for an entire Linux/GNU system
> and compile just the parts you want from source. YOU do the dependency
> management by hand, and in theory you can alter the source code to
> remove dependencies you don't want. So hypothetically it's *possible* to
> work around any given distro's poor dependency management. Does that
> mean I actually want to go to such extremes? Not really, no.

And you *don't have to*.  So, what you're saying is that if you want to 
figure something out, you try the absolute most difficult way of doing 
it, and then declare it impossible?

Why not try the *easiest* way to do it, and if it doesn't make sense, ask 
a few questions so you can learn?

>> (remember the discussion we had a couple years ago about debugging a
>> kernel?  You uncategorically declared it was impossible to do so, and I
>> told you that I had actually *done* so myself, but you still refused to
>> believe it was possible to use a kernel debugger to get anything useful
>> out of a crash).
> 
> I still don't get how you can take megabytes of unformatted raw binary
> and glean anything remotely useful from it, but hey. Apparently there's
> some kind of black magic that makes this possible...

It's called education.  It's also not unformatted - the format of a stack 
dump is known, you just need to know how to interpret it.

That's what I've done - I've learned how to interpret the data I'm 
looking at in a kernel debugger.  It's not actually a pipe of /dev/
urandom, it actually does have a logical structure that can be learned.  
I know.  I did learn it for that particular platform.

>> You need to revise your view on that kind of thing and admit that you
>> don't know *everything*, but that there are people who know *more* than
>> you do and that you could *learn* from them.
> 
> The greatest knowledge is in knowing that you know nothing.

The greatest knowledge is in knowing that you can learn something.

> On the other hand, if you punch a brick wall with your fist, it hurts. A
> lot! Now do you assume you're just doing it wrong, and go ask an online
> forum how to do it "right"? Or do you just stop punching walls? I know
> which one I'd go for... I guess that makes me ignorant then.

Straw man alert.  Learning to read a stack dump is not like punching a 
brick wall.  Learning to configure apache is not like punching a brick 
wall.  Learning how to use Linux is - you guessed it - NOT LIKE PUNCHING 
A FRIGGING BRICK WALL!

Stop drawing false equivalencies.

>>> My limited experience is that when you ask for help, you get no reply.
>>> Or you get a few replies from people who don't really know how to help
>>> you, but they try to offer you some kind of useful information anyway.
>>
>> Your experience is limited; you need to gain more experience.
> 
> If you try something, and it doesn't work, you can keep trying it over
> and over again, or you can try something else. Which option is the most
> rational?

Neither - asking for help is the most rational option if it's something 
you think is important enough to try to learn in the first place.

> (I guess it's a question of degree, of course. If you give up at the
> first try, you'd never get anywhere. Then again, if you keep doing
> something that clearly doesn't work, you're also not going to get
> anywhere...)

Yes, which is why you ask questions of people with more experience.  Do 
you sense a common theme here yet? ;)

>>> What's to understand? Dependencies are tracked at a fairly coarse
>>> level. It is what it is. Just live with it...
>>
>> So, there's absolutely nothing more you can learn about dependency
>> tracking in Linux?
> 
> Package managers track package dependencies. Packaging teams write those
> dependencies. Sometimes their structure is a little coarse. What more is
> there to learn?

That "sometimes" doesn't mean "always", for a start.  It isn't always a 
question of packaging, for example - it can be a question of what 
components are compiled together into a single library.

>> Some dependencies are very coarse, yes.  Some are not.  Your
>> assumption, based on a high level understanding, is incomplete - and
>> you certainly *could* ask for more information about it and possibly
>> even contribute to making it better.
> 
> IME, although the open source development model means that theoretically
> anyone can contribute to improving the product, in practise this doesn't
> work. It's extremely rare for submitting a bug report to actually result
> in a fix. [That's assuming the problem is even strictly speaking a "bug"
> and not merely a "hey, maybe if the system looked more like THIS it
> might be better".] Actually contributing code is usually a practical
> impossibility, for various reasons.

The OSS model actually doesn't mean that "anyone can contribute", but 
rather that those who demonstrate skills can.  They don't call it a 
'meritocracy' for nothing. :)

> I'm sure somebody somewhere is committing code. But for most of us, it's
> just not an option.

If you've never committed code to the kernel, Linus isn't likely to let 
you rewrite an entire subsystem to suit your needs.  But if you write 
patches/fixes for known bugs and your code is good, yes, you can get into 
the team that does the work.

Again, "meritocracy".  One's ability to contribute is directly relative 
to the merit of one's contributions, and to do so, you have to start 
small.

>> Or at least understand it better, instead of parroting an explanation
>> that the MS-fanbois just love.
> 
> The irony is, I used to be the biggest Microsoft hater ever. I was used
> to using AmigaOS, an operating system which ACTUALLY WORKS PROPERLY.
> Compared to that, everything to come out of Redmond seemed like the
> biggest pile of junk ever. And then along comes Linux. It's based on
> tried and tested technology. It has powerful tools. It has uptimes
> measured in decades. It's faster and more efficient. It sounded so
> exciting!
> 
> Of course, initially Linux was a total PITA to set up and actually use.
> You needed to know all sorts of exotic technical details about your PC
> in order to get it to install. Making X11 work was basically a hopeless
> task.

At the time it came out, maybe 10 years ago for that matter (half it's 
life), that was true.  It's much less true now, though one can run into 
problems.  Which is why there's a community to help you out when you have 
issues.

I installed openSUSE 12.1 Beta 1 on my laptop.  The video went all 
wonky.  What did I do?  I posted a question on the openSUSE forums (where 
I'm staff) and asked if anyone else had seen the issue.  Turns out 
there's a bug submitted for it, and in a more recent kernel being tested, 
it's supposed to be fixed now.

So, I asked a question and learned (a) that it's a known issue, (b) it's 
being worked on, and (c) a fix has probably been committed that I can 
test out.

So when I have a chance, I'm going to try that fix and report back 
whether it worked or not.

What I *didn't* do was just declare "it's hopeless to get this to work" 
and give up.

See how that works?

> Over time, however, I came to realise that Linux doesn't actually seem
> to be much more efficient than Windows. That used to be one of the big
> things people talked about: you can run Linux on a 283 with 16MB RAM,
> and it WORKS, and it WORK WELL. Try doing that with Windows! But you
> know what? It's a long time since I've seen a distro that can still do
> that.

Puppy Linux, Damn Small Linux...there are a few left, but yes, most 
kernel developers have moved on from providing 286 support, because 
there's not much call for it.

> Essentially, things have evolved to the point where you can compare
> Windows and Linux, and see that each of them actually have merits
> compared to the other. And the point we're currently arguing about is
> one of them. On Windows, you just *install* stuff, and it works. Under
> Linux, you try to install stuff, and mostly it just works... except when
> it doesn't. And then all hell breaks lose.

And when it doesn't work on Windows or Linux, one asks questions to get 
help.

And I would debate "all hell breaks loose" with Linux when it doesn't.  
When it doesn't, it doesn't.  Usually (for me) on the rare occasions it 
happens, it's a missing dependency, and that's pretty easy to figure out 
these days.

> I'm not saying the entire Linux system sucks. I'm saying one specific
> aspect of it is annoyingly difficult. And yet, everybody is yelling at
> me like I'm some noob who installed Linux, tried it for ten minutes, and
> couldn't figure out what the A: drive is called now so I gave it. It's
> not LIKE that AT ALL. And it irritates me when people tell me I don't
> know what I'm talking about...

Well, it irritates several of us when you say "it's f-ing impossible!@!!@!
@!!" when in fact it's not, and you just haven't asked for help.

There's *always* someone with more experience.  In the Linux community, 
most of those with more experience are more than happy to help those with 
less, but in order to get that help, you have to ASK for it.

Jim

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