(Arch) Linux Myths

ANOKNUSA · 2010-12-09 21:12:40

Julius2 wrote:

In my experience, outdated wiki pages tend to propagate this stuff, along with blog entries. The trouble with blog entries is that they're often fire-and-forget, which means that solutions that might have been necessary a while ago are now unsuitable or unnecessary.

That sort of crap--particularly with regard to blog posts--is rampant, and something we might do well to warn new Arch users about. There's a good chance that once they get to Arch, they've already been burned by something, but we shouldn't count on that. Maybe an edit to the "beginners" entries on the wiki would help? More than once, while researching a problem, I've come across a dozen blogs repeating the same backwards info, with a single google hit near the bottom of the page linking to someone else's plea for responsible system maintenance. Seems a lot of bloggers out there like to just snag random snippets from others' posts and repeat them carelessly, and one needs to be willing to dig to find useful info. I think a combination of A) cleaned-up, up-to-date wiki entries and B) a reminder to all to think carefully about what they find on the net would be of good help to the Arch community.

ngoonee · 2010-12-10 00:18:53

Or perhaps intelligent users should realize that blogs are just blogs and not meant to be definitive sources of help? The wiki is another thing, that should be more trusted (and WAY more maintained than any blog).

ANOKNUSA · 2010-12-10 00:57:05

ngoonee wrote:

Or perhaps intelligent users should realize that blogs are just blogs and not meant to be definitive sources of help? The wiki is another thing, that should be more trusted (and WAY more maintained than any blog).

I whole-heartedly agree; however, not everyone comes to that conclusion as quickly as the sharper folks among us. Surely there have been times when you've found yourself staring at a long list of posts, wondering "What the hell is up with these people?" Maybe some of those writers could be disuaded from posting pointless, misleading or superfluous information by a short, conspicuous "READ ME FIRST" post at the top of the forum index. I mean no offense, ngoonee, but intelligent users are also aware that human psychology compels people to frequently fall into the ad populum mindset.

jasonwryan · 2010-12-10 01:13:46

ANOKNUSA wrote:

Maybe some of those writers could be disuaded from posting pointless, misleading or superfluous information by a short, conspicuous "READ ME FIRST" post at the top of the forum index.

Like the stickied posts we have at the top of many of the forums? The ones that are routinely ignored by the majority of new members (and some of the older ones)?

Julius2 · 2010-12-10 01:18:54

ANOKNUSA wrote:

Julius2 wrote:
In my experience, outdated wiki pages tend to propagate this stuff, along with blog entries. The trouble with blog entries is that they're often fire-and-forget, which means that solutions that might have been necessary a while ago are now unsuitable or unnecessary.
That sort of crap--particularly with regard to blog posts--is rampant, and something we might do well to warn new Arch users about. There's a good chance that once they get to Arch, they've already been burned by something, but we shouldn't count on that. Maybe an edit to the "beginners" entries on the wiki would help? More than once, while researching a problem, I've come across a dozen blogs repeating the same backwards info, with a single google hit near the bottom of the page linking to someone else's plea for responsible system maintenance. Seems a lot of bloggers out there like to just snag random snippets from others' posts and repeat them carelessly, and one needs to be willing to dig to find useful info. I think a combination of A) cleaned-up, up-to-date wiki entries and B) a reminder to all to think carefully about what they find on the net would be of good help to the Arch community.

The problem seems to be the most prevalent with driver and Xorg-related stuff along with networking, particularly wireless. There are a lot of "solutions" and firmware downloads for cards that already have in-kernel support, so if someone has a small problem with their wireless card, they can confuse things with old firmware and solutions that only make things worse. The Broadcom SNAFU might be a good example; hardly anyone is clear on what supports what and how well. the new brcm80211 driver should fix a few things once 2.6.37 is rolled out, but in the meantime we have to deal with several ugly methods like broadcom-wl (proprietary, blobby Broadcom drivers) and (ugh) ndiswrapper if the open-source drivers don't work out. It doesn't help that Broadcom cards tend to have many small, stupid little variants that show up in OEM stuff -- some of the integrated ones only give info about the chipset and are virtually impossible to work with in an educated way.

What we really need is more technically adept people editing the Wiki. I've done a lot to help (see this thread), but most people do not seem very interested. It is a bit of a simplification, but I think the 30% rule applies to us very strictly; you will get 30% as much help/info on the BBS as you will on the mailing list (different people reading, etc.) and you will only get 30% as much help on the Wiki as on the BBS. The problem is that this results in a lot of ignorant people, since the number of users with questions will always outweigh the number of users with answers, and if all the people with answers are giving them on the mailing list, you will see a lot more unnecessary traffic on the mailing list and BBS that could be prevented with some simple expansions and additions to the Wiki.

ConnorBehan · 2010-12-10 05:59:44

A myth that has always annoyed me (but isn't strictly related to Linux) is that BitTorrent encryption will defeat ISP throttling. No... the use of keypairs will not stop the ISP from knowing that you are using Bit Torrent, it will just stop them from knowing *what* you're torrenting. If you're talking about *tunnelling* then this is a solution but it only works if you have access to a server somewhere else whose connection isn't throttled. It is theoretically possible to tunnel BitTorrent traffic through SSH on your own machine without needing any other internet connection for non-tunnelled BitTorrent traffic but you would have to tell all the seeds and peers that this is what you're doing and they would have to co-operate and set it up on their end.

Sorry, that was way off-topic but it bugs me when these people confuse "cryptography" with "steganography".

ANOKNUSA · 2010-12-11 02:35:03

jasonwryan wrote:

Like the stickied posts we have at the top of many of the forums? The ones that are routinely ignored by the majority of new members (and some of the older ones)?

Yup, just like those, only--ya know--more conspicuous. Something that hits ya in the gut and makes ya vomit, so as to teach you a lesson before you find yerself with the concrete shoes and all. In all seriousness, I'm not trying to step on toes here; I think this idea would genuinely be helpful. A couple of examples to support my point:

1) Misfit138's post about reading the Forum Etiquette wiki entry is in the Newbie Corner, pretty close to the top. This is logical on its face, but who's to say a long-time Ubuntu/Fedora/Debian/Mint/SuSE user is gonna go straight to the Newbie Corner for help on [issue x] ? There's a very good chance they won't consider themselves noobs, even though to some of us it might be obvious that Arch isn't necessarily equal to any of these other distros. He also mentions marking threads as "Solved," which is important for maintaining clean and informative forums. However, the section regarding this in the wiki entry is near the bottom. Shouldn't this be near the top? Yes, I know--"Read the entire entry; don't get ahead of yourself." However, reading a long wiki article isn't something new users are inclined to do the moment they finish setting up their systems; they're going to want to have fun, and they'll almost inevitably screw something up and jump straight to the forums.

2) A few weeks back, I [Closed] a thread I'd started shortly after my first Arch installation. One of the administrators--tomk, to be exact--re-opened it and informed me that threads in the Newbie Corner don't get closed "here" unless a moderator does so. I thought about this for a minute, and came to the conclusion that the moderators want to retain an active archive of knowledge for the noobs. This would make sense but, thinking about this now, does "here" mean the newbie section or the entirety of the Arch Forums? There's no information on this readily available; the closest suggestion I have is a thread I was following that a user closed.

A simple "Read it, Know it, Love it" section at the top of the forums, collecting a few necessary bits on our philosophy here, could better inform people of how things work around here. It could allow the moderators to weed out the help vampires, post a single link (or two--the forum link and a helpful external link) and close a thread before it runs away with itself. It would serve to better help people out and could make it easier to maintain clean forum, as it would justify the immediate elimination of irrelavent/unhelpful/superfluous/divisive/pointless posts. And with that, I feel I've tread dangerously close to hijacking this forum, if I haven't crossed that line already. So I won't post to this thread anymore, in order to allow the original discussion to move forward. If anyone wants to reply to me and continue this discussion, you can drop me an email; Take care, all

anonymous_user · 2010-12-11 02:42:09

ANOKNUSA wrote:

2) A few weeks back, I [Closed] a thread I'd started shortly after my first Arch installation. One of the administrators--tomk, to be exact--re-opened it and informed me that threads in the Newbie Corner don't get closed "here" unless a moderator does so. I thought about this for a minute, and came to the conclusion that the moderators want to retain an active archive of knowledge for the noobs. This would make sense but, thinking about this now, does "here" mean the newbie section or the entirety of the Arch Forums? There's no information on this readily available; the closest suggestion I have is a thread I was following that a user closed.

Normal forum users cannot close threads. You can add "[Closed]" to the title but it won't really be closed.

jasonwryan · 2010-12-11 03:33:31

ANOKNUSA wrote:

A simple "Read it, Know it, Love it" section at the top of the forums, collecting a few necessary bits on our philosophy here, could better inform people of how things work around here.

Part of the appeal of Arch is it's well-defined core philosophy, The Arch Way; which emphasizes simplicity, and a do-it-yourself approach - among other things.

All of the information that people require is already posted in the appropriate places, whether on stickied on the boards or on the Wiki. The expectation is that people who want to be active members of the community will be active contributors as well - and the only way to contribute is to understand how things work by reading the relevant documentation.

Keeping it simple means having that information readily accessible - which it is, and then just pointing people at it when they need reminding. Having said that, it is a Wiki and contributions from the community are always encouraged...

And now, back to the myths.

Arch Linux

#26 2010-12-09 21:12:40

Re: (Arch) Linux Myths

#27 2010-12-10 00:18:53

Re: (Arch) Linux Myths

#28 2010-12-10 00:57:05

Re: (Arch) Linux Myths

#29 2010-12-10 01:13:46

Re: (Arch) Linux Myths

#30 2010-12-10 01:18:54

Re: (Arch) Linux Myths

#31 2010-12-10 05:59:44

Re: (Arch) Linux Myths

#32 2010-12-11 02:35:03

Re: (Arch) Linux Myths

#33 2010-12-11 02:42:09

Re: (Arch) Linux Myths

#34 2010-12-11 03:33:31

Re: (Arch) Linux Myths

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