CentOS - Oct 2005 - Thanks, good bye, and an observation from a newbie.

CentOS mailing list,

	Thank you all for answering my questions and being so supportive over
the last few months as I was running CentOS on my home machine.

	I have switched over to Ubuntu, and I will be devoting my learning
efforts to that distribution from this point on. However, while I'm sure
a new distribution will have the inevitable learning curve, a lot of the
tips and tricks I learned here will definitely help me get a head start.

	Because a "good bye and thank you" message on it's own would not
carry
new information, I wanted to just offer an observation of mine which
might help this list in communicating with future newbies who don't
quite grasp CentOS objectives, as I did.

	It seems to me there is a division between a developer's focus on how
things work, and a newbie's focus on results.
	Taking my recent situation with finding an MP3 player, I would look at
PlayerA, and PlayerB, which both ran on CentOS. One had a great
interface, and the other had a good tag editor. But I hoped to find a
player that had both features together.
	Then I look on the web and discover PlayerC, which seems like it might
carry both the features I want. I download it, but it doesn't work.
	I come to the list and ask why, and I'm advised that CentOS is an
enterprise level distribution, and not meant for running cutting edge
applications. So I'm confused. After all, PlayerC doesn't do anything
that PlayerA and PlayerB don't already do on CentOS, it just happens to
do them together. How, I wonder, am I doing anything "cutting edge",
or
that would threaten the stability of CentOS?
	It took me a while to realize that I was thinking about the results -
playing MP3s, for example. But when developers were speaking about
"cutting edge", they were speaking about the fact that the makers of
the
player were using exotic techniques which were incompatible with CentOS.
Those techniques are opaque to me, so the miscommunication continued.
	So my parting advice is to suggest that the next time a newbie can't
grasp why CentOS doesn't do what other distributions do, or why some
applications don't work even though they are only doing something that
other working applications do, that you explain the difference between
results and methods.
	Had I seen that difference earlier, I might not have struggled with
CentOS so long. It's clearly not the distribution for me.
	That's my suggestion, for whatever it's worth. I hope it can help with
future newbies, as I would guess that I won't be the last to try CentOS.

	Good luck with making CentOS a preeminent enterprise class solution.
It's a great distribution, and deserves its due of appreciation.

	All the best.

Dave

( Unsubscribing after this message )

Dave Gutteridge wrote:

[snip]

Heh.  After a month (or more) of handholding and triggering some of the 
hairiest catfights on the list in ages, he switches distros....to start 
it all over again....so he can get his mp3 player app to work.  8-)

I dunno, it just gave me a good chuckle as I sit here draining my 
basement after the deluge we got in the northeast this last week.   
(though only a minor inconvenience compared to what happened to people 
down south)

Cheers,

On Mon, 2005-10-17 at 00:47 +0900, Dave Gutteridge
wrote:
> CentOS mailing list,
> 
> 	Thank you all for answering my questions and being so supportive over
> the last few months as I was running CentOS on my home machine.
> 
> 	I have switched over to Ubuntu, and I will be devoting my learning
> efforts to that distribution from this point on. However, while I'm
sure
> a new distribution will have the inevitable learning curve, a lot of the
> tips and tricks I learned here will definitely help me get a head start.
> 
> 	Because a "good bye and thank you" message on it's own would
not carry
> new information, I wanted to just offer an observation of mine which
> might help this list in communicating with future newbies who don't
> quite grasp CentOS objectives, as I did.
> 
> 	It seems to me there is a division between a developer's focus on how
> things work, and a newbie's focus on results.
> 	Taking my recent situation with finding an MP3 player, I would look at
> PlayerA, and PlayerB, which both ran on CentOS. One had a great
> interface, and the other had a good tag editor. But I hoped to find a
> player that had both features together.
> 	Then I look on the web and discover PlayerC, which seems like it might
> carry both the features I want. I download it, but it doesn't work.
> 	I come to the list and ask why, and I'm advised that CentOS is an
> enterprise level distribution, and not meant for running cutting edge
> applications. So I'm confused. After all, PlayerC doesn't do
anything
> that PlayerA and PlayerB don't already do on CentOS, it just happens to
> do them together. How, I wonder, am I doing anything "cutting
edge", or
> that would threaten the stability of CentOS?
> 	It took me a while to realize that I was thinking about the results -
> playing MP3s, for example. But when developers were speaking about
> "cutting edge", they were speaking about the fact that the makers
of the
> player were using exotic techniques which were incompatible with CentOS.
> Those techniques are opaque to me, so the miscommunication continued.
> 	So my parting advice is to suggest that the next time a newbie can't
> grasp why CentOS doesn't do what other distributions do, or why some
> applications don't work even though they are only doing something that
> other working applications do, that you explain the difference between
> results and methods.
> 	Had I seen that difference earlier, I might not have struggled with
> CentOS so long. It's clearly not the distribution for me.
> 	That's my suggestion, for whatever it's worth. I hope it can help
with
> future newbies, as I would guess that I won't be the last to try
CentOS.
> 
> 	Good luck with making CentOS a preeminent enterprise class solution.
> It's a great distribution, and deserves its due of appreciation.
> 
> 	All the best.
----
It is incredible that you could learn so much and yet learn so little.

No distribution is all things to all people. As hard as any of them try,
there's always a delicate balance between stable and the 'unstable'
which tends to have the software and hardware features that you want.

Unfortunately for you, you started with Fedora Core 4 which was
extremely experimental with gcc-4 and thereby living up to its promise
to push the edge of development when Fedora Core 3 would have given you
a stable end user interface with the application suites whereas CentOS
prefers the stable and thus doesn't have the diverse end user
applications. Fedora Core 4 is working pretty well now.

Ubuntu is a nice distribution but that isn't all things either as you
will soon discover and I expect that I will see you again on the Fedora
list before too long but who knows.

I know that I told you my recommendation was to have a server distro
like CentOS on one system to keep your files, email and stuff and your
desktop on another box so that you could wipe it, test another distro
and not lose anything as that would give you the best of both worlds -
stability and continuity with a desktop capable of using newer software
and technology. 

As you gain more experience with Linux, you will come to recognize that
Linux is not stagnant but an ever growing, ever changing product and
that stable means things that have been working long enough now to give
you less than you want on your desktop but you shouldn't have to fool
around with it and unstable means you gotta fool around with it to get
what you want on your desktop.

As for your 'observation' - I'm quite certain that you were given
the
right story all along, you just didn't know which voices to listen to.

Craig


-- 
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Dave Gutteridge wrote:
> 	Then I look on the web and discover PlayerC, which seems like it might
> carry both the features I want. I download it, but it doesn't work.
> 	I come to the list and ask why, and I'm advised that CentOS is an
> enterprise level distribution, and not meant for running cutting edge
> applications. So I'm confused. After all, PlayerC doesn't do
anything
> that PlayerA and PlayerB don't already do on CentOS, it just happens to
> do them together. How, I wonder, am I doing anything "cutting
edge", or
> that would threaten the stability of CentOS?
Centos/RHEL is released once every 18 months and is focused on having a 
(relatively) small set of well tested, stable packages that are mainly 
aimed at servers and basic desktop functions like web and email. Makes 
perfect sense that they don't have the latest and greatest mp3 player 
package.
> 	It took me a while to realize that I was thinking about the results -
> playing MP3s, for example. But when developers were speaking about
> "cutting edge", they were speaking about the fact that the makers
of the
> player were using exotic techniques which were incompatible with CentOS.
> Those techniques are opaque to me, so the miscommunication continued.
There's probably no 'exotic techniques' going on, just that Centos
is
not trying to keep up with the latest release of every package out 
there, just stable releases of a number of important packages. Centos 
can play mp3's as well as Ubuntu can, but if you want lots more 
available packages that are newer then Ubuntu is probably the way to go.


-- 
Tim Edwards

On Sunday 16 October 2005 11:47, Dave Gutteridge wrote:
> 	It seems to me there is a division between a developer's focus on how
> things work, and a newbie's focus on results.
Nobody yet in the thread has touched the real issue.  The real issue has been 
ridiculed, however; 'Luser couldn't get MP3's to play.  Poor
Luser...'  So,
what is the real issue?  Users just want it to work.  They don't necessarily
share developer's knack for arcana like GTK version numbers and version skew
prevention.  They DON'T EVEN WANT TO KNOW in some cases.

Why do people use CentOS?  To get work done, perhaps?  If a newbie is a 
hobbyist of sorts, and wants to try out 'that linux thing' and all
they've
known is Windows, then the idea that "one 'brand' of Linux
won't run programs
that another 'brand' of Linux will" is totally alien, and the whole
library
dependency issue is completely foreign, and the newbie justifiably believes 
they shouldn't have to worry about such things.  The newbie just asked 
around, and got some recommendations: 'Yeah, man, Gentoo is so cool.' 
or
'Man, you've got to try Ubuntu.'  Or they read a Linux Journal
Readers Choice
survey, and find CentOS at number two on the list, and want to try it out.  
They DO NOT KNOW, NOR DO THEY CARE, that it is an 'Enterprise' linux. 
They
just care that a lot of other people liked it, and it's popular.

Sure, CentOS is a so-called 'Enterprise' Linux.  But what exactly does
that
mean?  Well, it certainly doesn't mean stability (and let me make it clear 
that I know it's primarily an upstream North  Carolina company's
problems).
It certainly doesn't mean things don't change.  It doesn't get you a
system
that is less likely to break during a minor update.  Nope, none of that.  Nor 
does it get you a primarily 'server' operating system.  The
'Enterprise'
linux distributions are great general-purpose operating systems.

Sure, I understand why Player C won't work with Player A and Player B will. 
I
even understand why the makers of Player C might be using the versions of 
packages they are using.  (hey, anybody remember the mplayer vendetta against 
gcc 2.96?)

Fact is, Linux in its current state, thanks to the wonderful supportive 
mailing lists (for all distributions, not just this one) is not suited for 
newbies.  Newbies be warned: you will be ridiculed for just wanting the 
system to work.  (yes, a sizable dose of sarcasm to be found there...)

Suggestion to list members (including myself): if a newbie asks a rank newbie 
question, and you don't have the patience to answer it from a newbie's 
perspective, then either hit delete or just shut up.  RTFM is not an 
acceptable answer, unless you answer the question, then provide a polite 
pointer to the place in the manual (that they might not even know how to 
find) that answers that question.

As an example, I wrote up several caveats for the RPM distribution of the 
PostgreSQL RPMs, placed, helpfully I thought, 
in /usr/share/doc/postgresql-x.y.z-r/README.rpm-dist  (named that way, 
instead of README.rpm, so that RealAudio or RPM itself wasn't started when 
people browsed to it with their file manager of choice, or with their web 
browser).

Guess what?  Out of fifty newbies who asked questions that were answered in 
the README, only one had the foggiest idea that the file even existed.  And 
that person was simply too lazy to read it.  Of those people, about forty, 
when their question was answered and a pointer to the file was given, were 
very happy the file existed; two even wrote me a note that they wished they 
had known it existed, because then they wouldn't have bothered me.

But the most aggravating answers from the 'knowledgable' users were
either
'throw out the RPM, you really want to learn how to build from source'
or
full of misinformation (on behavior that was FULLY documented).  When I would 
correct that sort of misinformation (my favorite was the people who needed 
TCP/IP connections to the postmaster; the old way was to add a -i to the 
postmaster invocation, and the new way involved editing a configuration file: 
the number of people who advocated EDITING THE INITSCRIPT and adding -i was 
startling, showing their ignorance to the fact that the initscript can get 
blown away in an RPM update at whim, but that the config file wasn't ever 
overwritten), the misinformers would become very offended that I had changed 
the Way We Do Things (I didn't; upstream did) and that I had the gall to 
correct their Obviously Better Information (yeah, I just maintain the 
packages, what do I know?).  The next was the whole logging issue (the 
postgresql initscript redirects stdout to /dev/null for a reason) that, 
again, was documented.  The next was 'I upgraded the RPM with rpm -U and now
my database won't start!  Why?'  which, unfortunately, had to be
answered
with 'complain upstream; they don't support that kind of upgrade.' 
That got
me a lot of grief, for something I didn't do.

No, Linux isn't for newbies, and ninety percent of the time it's not the
distribution's fault.
-- 
Lamar Owen
Director of Information Technology
Pisgah Astronomical Research Institute
1 PARI Drive
Rosman, NC  28772
(828)862-5554
www.pari.edu