Nishit Dave wrote:
On Thu, Feb 21, 2008 at 10:46 PM, Rony gnulinuxist@gmail.com wrote:
Those who receive community ( free-of-cost ) support do not have much value for it. A professional approach is necessary or it will end up as demo sessions.
Well, I don't know about you, but I value the free support from the community very highly, and hold it in good esteem. If we start to prefer a 'professional' approach, we might be defeating the very purpose of this movement.
What I have observed is that free help is considered a demo. After all your efforts and hard work in installing GNU, the user may simply knock it off after some time or keep using windows in dual boot. Plus there are still some grey areas in linux ( not linux's fault ) for latest hardware. Laptops use latest hardware and keep changing specs every few months so all of it may not get working unless a few months pass and the linux drivers are available. Individually we can manage for some time if a few devices don't work but a general buyer may not be patient.
Let those that have invested the most in FOSS development (read: large companies) charge for supporting it, but when it comes to really doing simple things like installation and minor trouble-shooting, why can't we organize it? Almost all here would agree that they have, at least some of the time, enjoyed setting up Linux on somebody's computer as a matter of proselytizing?
This list is meant to do that.