On 4/20/06, Devdas Bhagat devdas@dvb.homelinux.org wrote:
Lol ... this is some good shit. But seriously, I'd like to quote what Marcus Aurelius says to his son Commodus in Gladiator: "Your failure as a son is my failure as a father"
When we as Linux experts *initiate* new people into the brood, we tend to focus on the fancy stuff to WOW them, rather than focusing on the basics of how and where to look for help. No one tells them that man and Info often don't work; and no one tells them what to do when that happens ... about /usr/share/doc, about trying the latest version, about looking at documentation in the source package. Googling should be the second last resource and asking others for help the absolute last one. Linux help sources are as diverse as the software packages and take some getting used too ... but they are the quintessential survival skill if there ever was one.
I have been guilty of this and have seen other people do it. We're so eager to make them jump into the water that we almost skip the part where we're supposed to teach them how to swim. Eventually we end up over-worked *snobbish* life-guards.
I am not saying there won't be dumb users asking stupid questions ... just that this is one area where we can improve our own lot before we(rightly) point the finger. _ farazs