The shell way or the highway [long rant]

[doas777]

My point is when the student is ready the teacher will appear.

very sage. I've been in IT for a while now, and gave linux a try several times over the years, but was never successful with it. then in '07, I tried feisty, and lo and behold, for the first time, i was ready for linux, and linux was ready for me. the rest is history.

[benj1]

well i can't speak for anyone else, but if someone asked i would be happy to give a breakdown of a command.

im not about to go into a big indepth explanation if i don't know the other person, i dont know how much they know or anything, theres no point going into a long winded explanation of 'cp' if the OP already knows what it is, if they don't and they ask i will explain.

[mick55]

Right on Benj1

theres no point going into a long winded explanation of 'cp' if the OP already knows what it is, if they don't and they ask i will explain.

The Middle Way.

I think this is very sensible and should satisfy both sides.

The student has to exhibit a willingness to learn.

peace
mick

[Mornedhel]

But i keep recalling the old phrase - give a man a fish, you have fed him for today.. Teach a man to fish, and you have fed him for a lifetime.

Like i said, i been happily using ubuntu for about a year now, but every time i ask a question on the forums, and someone responds with "wget this and that" and "tar -xzwf" - i get the chills..

You are very welcome to point out that I haven't read the man pages about tar, but i am a lazy guy, and after a year of going solo on ubuntu, i still don't know what -xzfw means. I'm not even sure if i remember that right.

Sorry, can't help you there. You say you want to learn, but that you are lazy. We can't help you be not lazy.

If you ask a question on the forums and don't understand the answer, make the effort of asking the seriouser-sounding posters what the commands mean. There are some who will launch one-shot answers and never come back to the thread (never mind if the problem has already been solved and the answer posted by someone else).

Identify those who answer in a bit more detail and ask them questions. Most of the time those posters don't explain because few newcomers actually want to understand; some even point out that they don't want explanations, just "tell me what to write". I for one will be happy to explain my answer. Before asking questions, though, there is something else you should do:

You say you don't read the man pages. Read them. They contain documentation. Documentation explains what things do.

Finally, I'll refer you to this piece of advice, written by Eric S. Raymond, who is kind of a big name in the FOSS community : How To Ask Questions the Smart Way. It's rather long, but worth reading.

[alphaniner]

[Y]ou're not really helping, unless you explain what those commands do, and what the other options are.

I stand by my opinion that this is not an attitude appropriate for someone who would be a Linux administrator. Because that's what we all are, to some extent or another.

People who demand to be spoon fed are doing a disservice to the whole community. Especially when you consider the volume of threads that could have been avoided by some quality time with Google, or a forum search.

[bonfire89]

i still don't know what -xzfw means. I'm not even sure if i remember that right.

I'm at least 2 years in... and I totally agree with you haha

Basically what i mean to say is - when you provide a bunch of terminal commands to solve whatever the question is, you're not really helping, unless you explain what those commands do, and what the other options are.

this is true.




I'm only starting now to think on my own, looking up man pages, doing my own commands that weren't explicitly told to me.. but even then.. I can't think for myself too much yet.

[dmizer]

I'm at least 2 years in... and I totally agree with you haha

At the risk of posting an RTFM post, there are usually helps for these kind of things. A simple: tar --help command tells you what each of the options mean:

-x, --extract, --get       extract files from an archive
-z, --gzip, --gunzip, --ungzip   filter the archive through gzip
-f, --file=ARCHIVE         use archive file or device ARCHIVE
-w, --interactive, --confirmation
                             ask for confirmation for every action

Sometimes the manuals are so cryptic they may as well have not been written, but this is not always the case so it's worth a look if you get stuck.

[benj1]

i can never remember the tar commands, i just use this in my ~/.bashrc

function extract()       # Handy Extract Program.
{
     if [ -f $1 ] ; then
         case $1 in
              *.tar.bz2)   tar xvjf $1     ;;
              *.tar.gz)    tar xvzf $1     ;;
              *.bz2)       bunzip2 $1      ;;
              *.rar)       unrar x $1      ;;
              *.gz)        gunzip $1       ;;
              *.tar)       tar xvf $1      ;;
              *.tbz2)      tar xvjf $1     ;;
              *.tgz)       tar xvzf $1     ;;
              *.zip)       unzip $1        ;;
              *.Z)         uncompress $1   ;;
              *.7z)        7z x $1         ;;
              *)           echo "'$1' cannot be extracted via >extract<" ;;
         esac
     else
         echo "'$1' is not a valid file"
     fi
}

[issih]

I stand by my opinion that this is not an attitude appropriate for someone who would be a Linux administrator. Because that's what we all are, to some extent or another.

People who demand to be spoon fed are doing a disservice to the whole community. Especially when you consider the volume of threads that could have been avoided by some quality time with Google, or a forum search.

If you take the position that linux should only ever be for those that have a good, clear understanding of its technical guts and can therefore contribute back into the community in what might be termed a "meaningful" way, then that attitude is fine.

For a distro like Ubuntu however it is not acceptable. Ubuntu is aiming to be "for human beings" to be for the masses, and bug #1 is all about increasing market share. Those of us who are strong technical users with a good understanding of computing/cli/programming etc will NEVER be the majority, and consequently we will never further the aims of the disto if we adopt that kind of attitude.

We have to be aiming to make it as easy as possible for users who are never going to write code/scripts/hack drivers etc to get around the system and understand what is happening as much as they can...and this must happen on their terms not ours, or we will remain entirely stuck at the margins.

Now there are plenty who will argue that those aims are wrong and that the nature of OSS requires its users to be technical and engaged in order to be a useful and therefore welcome member of the community...I can't be bothered having that argument again, because the views on both sides tend to be intractable. Regardless of that however, for this distro, the decision has been made to go for the mass market, and that requires that we cater to those who are less technically able, and do so in the way that helps them learn the most that they can, so that they actually feel that they have some understanding of their computer.

The current system where undocumented cli responses prevail has lots of reasons behind it (many of them good) but it is fundamentally holding back the aims of the distro, and I personally think that those who run this forum should endeavour to find some form of solution - not that an easy one seems to actually exist.

[blueridgedog]

The current system where undocumented cli responses prevail has lots of reasons behind it (many of them good) but it is fundamentally holding back the aims of the distro, and I personally think that those who run this forum should endeavour to find some form of solution - not that an easy one seems to actually exist.

As long as the window manager you select is variable and the medium of support is text based, support will gravitate to the command line. I suggest that perhaps we could use graphical support methods in the absolute beginners forum, but it is hard to answer a meaningful number of questions as a volunteer without using the tools that we actually use ourselves.

Can you imagine asking for a description of what is seen when gparted (or knowing that they have palimpsest) is run versus asking for the output of "sudo fdisk -l"? I do agree that it is a hurdle we have to get over, but I see no way over it easily without the people trying to field a few questions each day here having vertial images of multiple releases and multiple window managers.