Support in Arch

tlaloc · 2010-01-03 13:42:39

Incidentally, it was tomk who answered my first question around here (3 or 4 years ago). This was probably a very silly question, but I got a really competent answer back in ten minutes. This was like - wow, show me a big company which can give you this kind of support, right? So I decided to stay.

End of the story. If you don't like it, write it yourself.

Misfit138 · 2010-01-03 15:09:07

TemplarGR wrote:

.... Even if i do it, without official Arch support it will be useless. For such a project to work, it needs to be an official distribution tool.

I think this superlatively sums up your point and, also, your flawed logic.

Take a look at powerpill, yaourt, pacbuilder, pbfetch, ArchOne, Arch Server, the entire AUR, or any wiki article. None are 'official'; they are _all_ community-contributed..yet highly regarded, appreciated and fully embraced.

I encourage you to write a the tool and post it in the Community Contributions sub forum.

brianhanna · 2010-01-03 16:07:15

There are companies out there like Emporerlinux or even Dell who will sell you a preconfigured system with support. If you don't want to deal with hardware problems, why not buy from them? I haven't seen any companies that will install Arch though. Maybe a market niche for someone?

skottish · 2010-01-03 16:39:46

brianhanna wrote:

There are companies out there like Emporerlinux or even Dell who will sell you a preconfigured system with support. If you don't want to deal with hardware problems, why not buy from them? I haven't seen any companies that will install Arch though. Maybe a market niche for someone?

Nobody is going to sell pre-configured systems with Arch; It's too complicated for users that don't want full control over their systems.

brianhanna · 2010-01-04 00:02:32

I'm sure you're right skottish. That was meant with tongue in cheek.

ConnorBehan · 2010-01-05 16:26:18

Many good points have been made here but my $0.02 are as follows. Look at my posts. Most of them go:

ConnorBehan: Some very specific problem that's difficult to solve.
*no replies*
*6 months later*
ConnorBehan: Found the solution after 6 months of messing around.

I'm not mad at the Arch community because I didn't receive help. I realize that the kind of questions I ask these days are really obscure. Open source is about providing free code. Writing code is easy. Trying to guess what kind of system every user has and what each user could've done to his or her system to cause certain pieces of code to stop working is hard. Providing free support is a much greater challenge that has not been overcome yet. In fact the biggest contributors to open source are companies who can afford to write all this code precisely because they charge so damn much for support.

Last edited by ConnorBehan (2010-01-05 16:27:11)

Dusty · 2010-01-05 18:56:08

skottish wrote:

Nobody is going to sell pre-configured systems with Arch; It's too complicated for users that don't want full control over their systems.

Coming Soon to Arch Schwag! :-D

Dusty

akephalos · 2010-01-05 19:33:56

I'm noticing that Arch as a trend, it is rather a rightist (liberal, free market) community, although open-source promise in general, especially the FSF concepts are leftist - fair market, socialist. Most people in the Arch community (including me) don't seem to feel obliged to absolutely anything, including reliability or promises of any kind. I think there's no coincidence that there is no "Arch social contract", but only the "Arch way" philosophy for identity.

This user-centric design necessarily implies a certain "do-it-yourself" approach to using the Arch distribution. Rather than pursuing assistance or requesting a new feature to be implemented by developers, Arch Linux users have a tendency to solve problems themselves and share the results with the community and development team -- a "Do first, then ask" philosophy.

People help if they feel like and when they feel like, but I admit that TemplarGR's point is a valid one, although social responsibility doesn't seem to be a value shared with the majority of Arch users.

I don't think that a distribution user base depends on the political affiliation of them, by any means, but rather on their psychological type and lifestyle.

tomk · 2010-01-05 20:06:45

Right...

I'll just jump in here to remind everyone that politics is off-limits around here, so if anyone wants to respond to that aspect of akephalos' post, please do it somewhere else.

Stick to the original topic, or better still, just let the thread die - after all, the OP hasn't responded for four days now.

ralvez · 2010-01-05 20:14:17

After reading this thread (it's long and I almost quit half-way ) I think that the core of the problem is that TemplarGR is making an internal attribution that translate into "People here do not want to help me".
I do not know about others in this forums but I have also had questions gone unanswered in the past ... you can find them easily I've marked them [unsolved] so other people looking for a solution on the same problem do not waste time with them but I have *never* made the assumption that people do not care but rather they *do not have* the answer.

I assume that most people in these forums are like me, follow the RSS and when they see a thread that they feel like "I know this one" they just post.

In my experience, 95% of the time I get help or good suggestions that help me solve my own problems; then the only thing I need to do is post my solution so others can benefit form it.

As a matter of fact, in my last post (a few days back) I got an answer from one of the devs in +/- an hour. Hey! Even for a paid subscription that's good.

I think you will be happier if: 1) Do not take things too personal 2) If you think you can contribute ( eg: you are a programmer, so let's say code) then just do it; people do appreciate it... but do no *expect* anything in return. 3) If you need help be concise and to the point and above all ... just give people time to help.

R.

app4des · 2010-01-05 20:18:55

I am a professional programmer from Greece. Just completed my studies at my University.

What about waiting a little more before you call yourself that way.

Anyway you have no idea of the linux ecosystem. Arch linux is a distro that takes software that the original developers consider stable and make them available through pacman. If you find a bug, Arch Linux most probably is not responsible for anything. If you want real technical support buy and use Red Hat/Suse/Novell software. Most software that you get free in Arch Linux is made from those companies because some people pay them for their hard work. If you want to help linux, pay the companies that write software for it or report bugs that will at least reach the original developers.

Acecero · 2010-01-05 20:25:30

Dusty wrote:

skottish wrote:
Nobody is going to sell pre-configured systems with Arch; It's too complicated for users that don't want full control over their systems.
Coming Soon to Arch Schwag! :-D
Dusty

You might be able to charge more for a user-specific configuration if a user requests it.

akephalos · 2010-01-05 21:03:20

tomk wrote:

I'll just jump in here to remind everyone that politics is off-limits around here, so if anyone wants to respond to that aspect of akephalos' post, please do it somewhere else.
Stick to the original topic, or better still, just let the thread die - after all, the OP hasn't responded for four days now.

It was not politics, but a comparison to the political spectrum. It seems you were the only one who though I was in a political debate, officer. In addition, I don't understand your eagerness to bury a rightful issue. If the OP is gone it doesn't mean the problem is gone, this is not a help thread but a discussion one.

Misfit138 · 2010-01-05 21:37:02

akephalos wrote:

tomk wrote:
I'll just jump in here to remind everyone that politics is off-limits around here, so if anyone wants to respond to that aspect of akephalos' post, please do it somewhere else.
Stick to the original topic, or better still, just let the thread die - after all, the OP hasn't responded for four days now.
It was not politics, but a comparison to the political spectrum. It seems you were the only one who though I was in a political debate, officer. In addition, I don't understand your eagerness to bury a rightful issue. If the OP is gone it doesn't mean the problem is gone, this is not a help thread but a discussion one.

kephalos, please calm your tone and re-read tomk's post: "..if anyone wants to respond to that aspect of akephalos' post, please do it somewhere else.."
You have stated a valid point and made an insightful observation, and I tend to agree with you, but you are most certainly out of line in responding to tomk in this way.

tomk · 2010-01-05 22:10:46

akephalos - simply heading off any responses along the lines of "hey, who are you calling a rightist?". Also, thanks for the promotion, but I'm happy with "Forum Moderator".

I'm not burying anything here, just pointing out that although it's an active thread, everyone except the OP, and now you, agrees that there is no issue here. As a result, there is very little actual discussion going on.

akephalos · 2010-01-05 22:27:47

Hehe...

I'm sorry if I was too offensive.

.:B:. · 2010-01-09 11:59:13

Dusty wrote:

skottish wrote:
Nobody is going to sell pre-configured systems with Arch; It's too complicated for users that don't want full control over their systems.
Coming Soon to Arch Schwag! :-D
Dusty

And, hopefully, with skottish' mobile phone number for 24/7 support?

Dusty · 2010-01-09 21:16:15

I'm willing to get some people together that can provide this 24/7 support, but I'm not sure if the market can bear it. Arch is big enough now that I think there are people that would pay for such a service, but it would have to be a steep fee for me to hire the people that would be willing to be on call.

Dusty

skottish · 2010-01-09 22:46:09

B wrote:

Dusty wrote:
skottish wrote:
Nobody is going to sell pre-configured systems with Arch; It's too complicated for users that don't want full control over their systems.
Coming Soon to Arch Schwag! :-D
Dusty
And, hopefully, with skottish' mobile phone number for 24/7 support?

You got it:

*** Phone number removed by me ***

Even as a joke, it may not be a good idea to post the MS technical support line...

.:B:. · 2010-01-10 07:08:53

Lol

ngoonee · 2010-01-10 07:29:25

I think I'll bite, but being from the far corner of the globe, I probably don't understand your 'leftist/rightist' stuff properly, so I'm happy to ignore that part and just speak of the words I understand =p.

akephalos wrote:

I'm noticing that Arch as a trend, it is rather a rightist (liberal, free market) community, although open-source promise in general, especially the FSF concepts are leftist - fair market, socialist. Most people in the Arch community (including me) don't seem to feel obliged to absolutely anything, including reliability or promises of any kind. I think there's no coincidence that there is no "Arch social contract", but only the "Arch way" philosophy for identity.
This user-centric design necessarily implies a certain "do-it-yourself" approach to using the Arch distribution. Rather than pursuing assistance or requesting a new feature to be implemented by developers, Arch Linux users have a tendency to solve problems themselves and share the results with the community and development team -- a "Do first, then ask" philosophy.
People help if they feel like and when they feel like, but I admit that TemplarGR's point is a valid one, although social responsibility doesn't seem to be a value shared with the majority of Arch users.
I don't think that a distribution user base depends on the political affiliation of them, by any means, but rather on their psychological type and lifestyle.

I'm not sure how you understand the "Arch community", but for me it is similar to, for example, the communities that form around a common interest such as your kick-ball weekend club. There's those who contribute administratively, mostly for free (devs/TUs), and those who just participate. In that context, I don't think any particular member of the club has a 'social responsibility' to assist another member in the non-essential part of life known as football. Some will, because they want to and like it. Others would just point to the library and say "go read up on it and get some practice", because that's the easiest way for the community (not the individual).

Similarly in Arch, there's those who like spoon-feeding, for want of a better word. I have no responsibility towards you or your system, social or otherwise. If you were starving, I'd have the human/social responsibility to assist you, feed you, enable you to have a go at life. If you have a problem with your computer (a luxury to some, certainly not a necessity to basic life), then I may very well help you if I feel like it and have the time, but it is not my responsibility to, even though we share a community.

Gen2ly · 2010-01-10 09:44:44

Ok, I think we sufficiently scared him now .

ngoonee · 2010-01-10 10:49:38

Bad archers. Bad bad archers... =p

beroal · 2010-01-10 15:30:56

ngoonee wrote:

your computer (a luxury to some, certainly not a necessity to basic life)

That's true.

Arch Linux

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