A great deal of technical assistance has been rendered to the general public on Ubuntu Forums in the past two months. As such, I'm proud to introduce the new Category setup for my Spotlight: Ubuntu Forums section. The categories shall be as follows:
* Glaring Spotlight (for items of personal concern)
* Question of the Month (for overlooked questions that should be relatively easy to address)
* Technical Spotlight (for those who provide the best technical assistance for Linux)
* Gaming Spotlight (for those who contribute to gaming on Linux)
The general idea is that areas that need to be addressed will be followed by those who address issues particularly well, so as to end on a positive note.
Showing posts with label support. Show all posts
Showing posts with label support. Show all posts
Monday, April 6, 2009
Friday, February 20, 2009
Spotlight: Taurus (Ubuntu Forums)
In light of my last post, I'm considering making this a monthly "feature" of sorts. Each month, I intend to highlight the parts of the Linux community that seem to be working (to some extent), and exactly what they're doing right. This month, I've selected Taurus of Ubuntu Forums to receive this honor. Okay okay, he's just another Linux nerd, right? Well, I think you should see for yourself - he's not condescending, he knows the subject matter, and he's genuinely helpful. This is the perfect example of what Linux support should be; were I to nominate him for specific support teams (see my previous post), he'd be up for General Implementation (Thorough) with potential inclusion in a Java Implementation Team and Drive Configuration Team.
Taurus, we salute you!
Profile | Contributions
Taurus, we salute you!
Profile | Contributions
Monday, February 2, 2009
What's wrong with Ubuntuforums?
Well, in short, nothing's wrong with Ubuntuforums; on the other hand, everything's wrong with Ubuntuforums.
Say what?
There's nothing wrong with a large community of people attempting to help one another out with an alien technology. Absolutely nothing wrong whatsoever. However, the problem exists where each member is considered as credible as the next in all given subjects, since there are multiple ways of getting things done in Linux and a number of ways to find out the solution to any given problem. There is a fundamental flaw that needs to be addressed here. Every human being is physically capable of discovering some way of making brain surgery work, regardless of what impediments they might otherwise have in life. Does that mean all people are well-suited to being brain surgeons? Absolutely not. Some are better suited to mechanical work, and still others are more adept at handling social issues. This is why we have Presidents, technicians, and grocery baggers. So what happens when everyone tries to solve the problems of others with no central authority for the relative validity of those "solutions"? In short, Ubuntuforums.
That being said, there are a few basic steps that can be addressed to improve the overall workflow on Ubuntuforums, some of which Canonical has already addressed in the formation of certain core teams. Here is my proposal: take this to its logical end, with teams that have greater experience with certain parts of the system being differed to first. Here's an example to see my point:
Current situation: Sally is having issues with her BlueTooth connection between her cellular phone and PC. She enters Ubuntuforums and posts a question regarding the issue. A number of replies are issued, with everything from a really technical answer to a simple "change your distribution". The actual answer that she needs is eventually lost in the flurry of frustrated replies, where insults get levelled. The answer may be elsewhere on the forums, but she never sees it. Sally leaves the Ubuntu community, frustrated and confused at the complete lack of help even though somebody posted the "right" answer.
Proposed situation: Sally is having issues with her BlueTooth connection between her cellular phones and PC. She enters Ubuntuforums and posts a question regarding the issue. A number of replies are issued, with everything from a really technical answer to a simple "change your distribution". A member of the BlueTooth stack team notices the issue, fixes it, and top-posts a solution to her issue and the thread is closed; failing that, a conversation begins between Sally and the BlueTooth stack team with appropriate information being provided to fix her issue; failing even that, the issue is handed to the BlueTooth implementation team, who works with Sally to attempt to solve her issue. When all else fails, the continuing dialog between Sally, the teams, and the general public attempts to find a solution to Sally's issue. That way, everyone can contribute, but people will be looking to people with experience in a particular field first. Once an acceptable answer to the issue is discovered, it is top-posted and the thread is closed.
The basic concept here is that discussions that are vital to development can take place, but the solutions are made obvious as soon as they're available. Perhaps that can make Ubuntuforums a nicer, more informative place to visit for all.
Say what?
There's nothing wrong with a large community of people attempting to help one another out with an alien technology. Absolutely nothing wrong whatsoever. However, the problem exists where each member is considered as credible as the next in all given subjects, since there are multiple ways of getting things done in Linux and a number of ways to find out the solution to any given problem. There is a fundamental flaw that needs to be addressed here. Every human being is physically capable of discovering some way of making brain surgery work, regardless of what impediments they might otherwise have in life. Does that mean all people are well-suited to being brain surgeons? Absolutely not. Some are better suited to mechanical work, and still others are more adept at handling social issues. This is why we have Presidents, technicians, and grocery baggers. So what happens when everyone tries to solve the problems of others with no central authority for the relative validity of those "solutions"? In short, Ubuntuforums.
That being said, there are a few basic steps that can be addressed to improve the overall workflow on Ubuntuforums, some of which Canonical has already addressed in the formation of certain core teams. Here is my proposal: take this to its logical end, with teams that have greater experience with certain parts of the system being differed to first. Here's an example to see my point:
Current situation: Sally is having issues with her BlueTooth connection between her cellular phone and PC. She enters Ubuntuforums and posts a question regarding the issue. A number of replies are issued, with everything from a really technical answer to a simple "change your distribution". The actual answer that she needs is eventually lost in the flurry of frustrated replies, where insults get levelled. The answer may be elsewhere on the forums, but she never sees it. Sally leaves the Ubuntu community, frustrated and confused at the complete lack of help even though somebody posted the "right" answer.
Proposed situation: Sally is having issues with her BlueTooth connection between her cellular phones and PC. She enters Ubuntuforums and posts a question regarding the issue. A number of replies are issued, with everything from a really technical answer to a simple "change your distribution". A member of the BlueTooth stack team notices the issue, fixes it, and top-posts a solution to her issue and the thread is closed; failing that, a conversation begins between Sally and the BlueTooth stack team with appropriate information being provided to fix her issue; failing even that, the issue is handed to the BlueTooth implementation team, who works with Sally to attempt to solve her issue. When all else fails, the continuing dialog between Sally, the teams, and the general public attempts to find a solution to Sally's issue. That way, everyone can contribute, but people will be looking to people with experience in a particular field first. Once an acceptable answer to the issue is discovered, it is top-posted and the thread is closed.
The basic concept here is that discussions that are vital to development can take place, but the solutions are made obvious as soon as they're available. Perhaps that can make Ubuntuforums a nicer, more informative place to visit for all.
Saturday, October 4, 2008
Perhaps an Automated Setup?
Here's an older concept of mine, that plays on the wide availability of wireless drivers and ndiswrapper. Why not take the two, have a script that runs a dmidecode to determine system stats, then set up ndiswrapper correctly? It's hideous in its current form, but it can be refined and even lightened with the right review practices.
http://lagreview.pastebin.com/f6d229ae4
(Developer's Note: It's MONSTROUS, and I mean Frankenstein-style GROTESQUE. It's only designed to work with my system right now, and it needs to be saved as ndismart in order to function properly. Woe be unto he who runs this script without a Broadcom card.)
http://lagreview.pastebin.com/f6d229ae4
(Developer's Note: It's MONSTROUS, and I mean Frankenstein-style GROTESQUE. It's only designed to work with my system right now, and it needs to be saved as ndismart in order to function properly. Woe be unto he who runs this script without a Broadcom card.)
Monday, September 29, 2008
Spotlight: Starcannon (Ubuntu Forums)
Check out this guy. Every single one of his posts is a gem, with directions carefully selected and verified to do what the end user needs. This is the model of good technical support right here.
Starcannon, we salute you!
Profile | Contributions
Starcannon, we salute you!
Profile | Contributions
The Trouble with Tribbles; or, Why It Takes So Long to Update Gtk-Gnutella
I want to apologize in advance for what I'm going to be posting on this blog in the future. I love Ubuntu, and I have yet to find a distribution that rivals it in both pure operation and the friendliness of its community. That being said, I think it needs to be clarified that "having a lovefest" should not necessarily be equated to "getting knowledgeable answers on the subject". That being said, I've only been on the scene since 2002 / Shrike, so I suppose I'm a relative newcomer (particularly if we go much beyond "BASH Scripting for Chores"), but I like to at least look into a subject enough to have an answer ready for a question that may never be asked.
That is in stark contrast to this thread. The user enters the forums, basically states that Gnutella cannot be updated to its latest version (0.96.5), and sits back. The first reply is perhaps misguided, but astute (particularly given the ineptitude of the average newbie): check apt-get again. The user does so, and returns back. The next viable solution consists of WAITING FOR THE NEXT RELEASE. I'm sorry, that may be an acceptable solution for people who have no need to update, but the understanding needs to be made that "ancient versions" of Gnutella are essentially blacklisted by 99% of the Internet population as "suspicious activity". It's completely subjective, completely unfair, and a practice that I fell victim to recently.
For the curious, out of more than 200 threads, here is the one post that correctly identifies and solves the problem: read the README. This isn't a difficult concept; after all, any good developer knows that people should enter the restaurant with the big neon sign that says "Joe's" if they want to eat at Joe's, right? Apparently not, and this is a downside to society in general. What's even more remarkable is that almost every single thread lacked even ONE post linking to the solution, even though even the thread in question was formed less than a month after the initial solution.
Bearing this in mind, is it really any wonder that Microsoft is merely concerned about Linux?
UPDATE: Here's a quick solution to the problem, that took me two hours to code - mostly because I forgot the proper orientation of escape sequences (*shudder*). Enjoy.
Of course, there are a few notes:
A. You can name the file whatever you like. The setup depends on an embedded temporary file with a constant filename.
B. The file needs to be given permission to run (chmod +x) in order to function correctly. Since it accesses apt for many of the requirements, it must also be run as sudo (at least until I figure out fakeroot a little better).
C. The "sleep 1m" line waits one minute for the download to complete. This works fine on most high-speed lines, but needs adjustment for sub-optimal (read: Dial-Up) carriers. If there's some better way to prevent execution of the next line until wget finishes its chore, I'm unaware of it.
UPDATE #2 (October 7, 2008): The "sleep 1m" issue has been fixed with a simple Do-While loop that effectively halts further operations until wget completes its task. Of course, being a BASH script, it will still need to be set executable and run as sudo.
UPDATE #3 (October 14, 2008): Here's the fix for some issues introduced the last time I tried to improve this code base. See what I mean about loathing escape sequences?
http://lagreview.pastebin.com/f61ca2198
That is in stark contrast to this thread. The user enters the forums, basically states that Gnutella cannot be updated to its latest version (0.96.5), and sits back. The first reply is perhaps misguided, but astute (particularly given the ineptitude of the average newbie): check apt-get again. The user does so, and returns back. The next viable solution consists of WAITING FOR THE NEXT RELEASE. I'm sorry, that may be an acceptable solution for people who have no need to update, but the understanding needs to be made that "ancient versions" of Gnutella are essentially blacklisted by 99% of the Internet population as "suspicious activity". It's completely subjective, completely unfair, and a practice that I fell victim to recently.
For the curious, out of more than 200 threads, here is the one post that correctly identifies and solves the problem: read the README. This isn't a difficult concept; after all, any good developer knows that people should enter the restaurant with the big neon sign that says "Joe's" if they want to eat at Joe's, right? Apparently not, and this is a downside to society in general. What's even more remarkable is that almost every single thread lacked even ONE post linking to the solution, even though even the thread in question was formed less than a month after the initial solution.
Bearing this in mind, is it really any wonder that Microsoft is merely concerned about Linux?
UPDATE: Here's a quick solution to the problem, that took me two hours to code - mostly because I forgot the proper orientation of escape sequences (*shudder*). Enjoy.
Of course, there are a few notes:
A. You can name the file whatever you like. The setup depends on an embedded temporary file with a constant filename.
B. The file needs to be given permission to run (chmod +x) in order to function correctly. Since it accesses apt for many of the requirements, it must also be run as sudo (at least until I figure out fakeroot a little better).
C. The "sleep 1m" line waits one minute for the download to complete. This works fine on most high-speed lines, but needs adjustment for sub-optimal (read: Dial-Up) carriers. If there's some better way to prevent execution of the next line until wget finishes its chore, I'm unaware of it.
UPDATE #2 (October 7, 2008): The "sleep 1m" issue has been fixed with a simple Do-While loop that effectively halts further operations until wget completes its task. Of course, being a BASH script, it will still need to be set executable and run as sudo.
UPDATE #3 (October 14, 2008): Here's the fix for some issues introduced the last time I tried to improve this code base. See what I mean about loathing escape sequences?
http://lagreview.pastebin.com/f61ca2198
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