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This is another problem with switching to linux. When somebody makes a perfectly cogent complaint that hundreds of other people have also experienced, the popul

by lj3 10y ago

This is another problem with switching to linux. When somebody makes a perfectly cogent complaint that hundreds of other people have also experienced, the popular refrain among linux zealots is "It works for me. You must be doing it wrong." That must be nice for you, but that type of response makes the rest of us gladly run back to Windows. At least when we complain about bad windows features, we're not going to get gaslit.

pfranz 10y ago
That response is frustrating, but that's not a fair criticism. I feel like "You must be doing it wrong" is a hyperbolic simplification, too. This will happen in any community where you're getting voluntary support. Hell, when I'm supporting people at work I will sometimes start with, "Hmm, well, I'm not having a problem doing this." (and try to put that in a way that's not dismissive, but informative) Then I go and dig into and fix their problem. It is one of the first steps in troubleshooting. e.g. http://www.downforeveryoneorjustme.com/ http://www.downforeveryoneorjustme.com/ If you're not paying for support that might be where your support ends. At least you have a clue that it's not completely broken. "At least when we complain about bad windows features, we're not going to get gaslit." I feel equally frustrated troubleshooting Windows/Linux/OSX and third-party software. Most often I'll find someone with the same error, the first reply is something like "it's working for me, can you post a full log?", a full log is posted, and there was no further correspondence.
- Veen 10y ago
  > This will happen in any community where you're getting voluntary support. And that's another reason I won't go back to Linux from a Mac. I don't want voluntary support and to have to spend hours trawling forums to find fixes that don't work. I want paid support where someone is accountable when things don't work like they're supposed to. Every hour I spend futzing with Alsa or PulseAudio or PPAs or dodgy WIFI and printer drivers is an hourI could have been earning money (I'm a freelancer). That's what I meant when I said: "Polished has become more important to me as I've aged." When I was a student, I loved fiddling around with Linux. Now I'm a grown-up, I loathe wasting time. OS X lets me get on with things in a pleasant and consistent environment that works exactly as it's supposed to. I do have Linux nostalgia, but when I've tried to go back, I just become frustrated.
  - krylon 10y ago
    > I don't want voluntary support and to have to spend hours trawling forums to find fixes that don't work. To be fair, you get to do that with Windows problems, too. I work as a sysadmin at a Windows shop, and unless your company is willing to spring for an expensive support contract or pay a few hundred bucks per incident, Microsoft is not going to lift a finger to help with your problems and refer you to the technet forums instead (and lots of other software vendors do that, too). I do agree with the "I'm too old for this crap" line, though - like I said, things pretty much have just worked for me over the last couple of years, and I do not miss the good old days of spending a weekend trying to get something trivial like a touchpad or audio to work. It was fun back then, but that was a long time ago.
- krylon 10y ago
  > This will happen in any community where you're getting voluntary support. Not only there - at work, part of my duties at work is being the local helpdesk monkey. When people call me and complain, say, that the Internet is slow, the first thing I do is call up some semi-random web page and see if/how fast it loads. When it loads fine, my first response, too, is "works for me", meaning the problem is on their side, not on our router or the Internet at large. It does not mean it is their personal fault in any way. It just means I have just narrowed down the problem somewhat. It is a first step on what often has been as fascinating (and often enough frustrating) journey. Oh my, I should have finished reading your response. ;-) (When I am giving voluntary support, "works for me" does not, of course, mean "it's your fault and you're a moron", it means "I am not your personal helpdesk monkey - but if you're willing to do some more work narrowing down the problem, I am willing to continue helping you fix the problem!")
krylon 10y ago
> "It works for me. You must be doing it wrong." That is not what I meant at all. I am sorry if you got that impression. What I meant to say is that I was rather lucky in that regard. While hardware support on popular Linux distros has improved massively since I first tried it, there is still a lot of hardware around where support on Linux sucks. If I tried some distro on my notebook and something like Wifi or suspend/resume did not work, that would be a dealbreaker for me, too, and I am too old to spend a weekend trying to get stuff like that to work. But like I said, I was very lucky in that regard (and I really mean lucky - it's been at least ten years since I had to spend any significant amount of time getting my hardware to work properly).

by lj3 10y ago

pfranz 10y ago

That response is frustrating, but that's not a fair criticism. I feel like "You must be doing it wrong" is a hyperbolic simplification, too. This will happen in any community where you're getting voluntary support. Hell, when I'm supporting people at work I will sometimes start with, "Hmm, well, I'm not having a problem doing this." (and try to put that in a way that's not dismissive, but informative) Then I go and dig into and fix their problem. It is one of the first steps in troubleshooting. e.g. http://www.downforeveryoneorjustme.com/ http://www.downforeveryoneorjustme.com/ If you're not paying for support that might be where your support ends. At least you have a clue that it's not completely broken. "At least when we complain about bad windows features, we're not going to get gaslit." I feel equally frustrated troubleshooting Windows/Linux/OSX and third-party software. Most often I'll find someone with the same error, the first reply is something like "it's working for me, can you post a full log?", a full log is posted, and there was no further correspondence.

Veen 10y ago
> This will happen in any community where you're getting voluntary support. And that's another reason I won't go back to Linux from a Mac. I don't want voluntary support and to have to spend hours trawling forums to find fixes that don't work. I want paid support where someone is accountable when things don't work like they're supposed to. Every hour I spend futzing with Alsa or PulseAudio or PPAs or dodgy WIFI and printer drivers is an hourI could have been earning money (I'm a freelancer). That's what I meant when I said: "Polished has become more important to me as I've aged." When I was a student, I loved fiddling around with Linux. Now I'm a grown-up, I loathe wasting time. OS X lets me get on with things in a pleasant and consistent environment that works exactly as it's supposed to. I do have Linux nostalgia, but when I've tried to go back, I just become frustrated.
- krylon 10y ago
  > I don't want voluntary support and to have to spend hours trawling forums to find fixes that don't work. To be fair, you get to do that with Windows problems, too. I work as a sysadmin at a Windows shop, and unless your company is willing to spring for an expensive support contract or pay a few hundred bucks per incident, Microsoft is not going to lift a finger to help with your problems and refer you to the technet forums instead (and lots of other software vendors do that, too). I do agree with the "I'm too old for this crap" line, though - like I said, things pretty much have just worked for me over the last couple of years, and I do not miss the good old days of spending a weekend trying to get something trivial like a touchpad or audio to work. It was fun back then, but that was a long time ago.
krylon 10y ago
> This will happen in any community where you're getting voluntary support. Not only there - at work, part of my duties at work is being the local helpdesk monkey. When people call me and complain, say, that the Internet is slow, the first thing I do is call up some semi-random web page and see if/how fast it loads. When it loads fine, my first response, too, is "works for me", meaning the problem is on their side, not on our router or the Internet at large. It does not mean it is their personal fault in any way. It just means I have just narrowed down the problem somewhat. It is a first step on what often has been as fascinating (and often enough frustrating) journey. Oh my, I should have finished reading your response. ;-) (When I am giving voluntary support, "works for me" does not, of course, mean "it's your fault and you're a moron", it means "I am not your personal helpdesk monkey - but if you're willing to do some more work narrowing down the problem, I am willing to continue helping you fix the problem!")

krylon 10y ago

> "It works for me. You must be doing it wrong." That is not what I meant at all. I am sorry if you got that impression. What I meant to say is that I was rather lucky in that regard. While hardware support on popular Linux distros has improved massively since I first tried it, there is still a lot of hardware around where support on Linux sucks. If I tried some distro on my notebook and something like Wifi or suspend/resume did not work, that would be a dealbreaker for me, too, and I am too old to spend a weekend trying to get stuff like that to work. But like I said, I was very lucky in that regard (and I really mean lucky - it's been at least ten years since I had to spend any significant amount of time getting my hardware to work properly).