Newbie Question - about newbie user support

KAYVEN RIESE kayve at sfsu.edu
Thu Mar 27 11:42:16 PDT 2008


On Wed, 26 Mar 2008, Jason C. Wells wrote:
> KAYVEN RIESE wrote:
>> On Wed, 26 Mar 2008, christopher wrote:
>> 
> So -hackers really isn't a place for newbies.  Newbies should subscribe to 
> -questions.  This was the first list I subscribed to back in the day.

I've been on -questions.  Like a lot of the lists you get HELLLA emails.
It's hard to keep up with them.  I have found that -hackers get less
emails and if you ask a question that is especially newbie-ish, nobody
seems to care that much.  -hackers seems like a nice list that has
hardcore technical advice without the narrow definitions.

>
> A hacker is person who writes code in the context of this discussion. (The 
> first person to quote the jargon file earns minus one pedantic.)
>

Oops.  You are referring to my quoting of "luser?"  I am minus one
pedantic not pedantic enough?  {:}  Je ne comprende pas!  {:)

> Building the world isn't that hard really. FreeBSD has done a great job 
> making it mostly a fire and forget operation.  As long as you stay in the 
> shallow end it's easy.  It's when you start tinkering with your makefiles and 
> your sources that it gets fun.

The thing that bothers me about cvsup is that it REQUIRES that
supfile thingy, and I would prefer that I had a better handle on
it before willy nilly building.  Also, there are many different
supfiles, that gives me a stomache ache.  I know people are going
to tell me RTFM a lot.  Long long ago in a galaxy I was reading
all sorts of man pages, and I still do, but I really like the
term "luser" because I have only started being a unix admin in
the past few years on freeBSD.  I know c code, but the myriads of
make are still something I don't feel incredibly comfortable
with. A point I wanted to make about man pages is that they help
you if you already know what to do, and the manual can be a
little like that as well.

I'm not complaining.  I wish people weren't so harsh about nocaps
style.  I find it far more comfortable. I think the complaints about
nocaps being uneasy to read and conducive to greater error are
exaggerated. I understand I need to ask specific questions and give enough 
information. Sometimes that darn information is hard to obtain.  I know 
how to read error messages, but there is just so much backstory
when it comes to kernel code of an operatiing system.  Even when you
have built "toy" OSes in a University course called "Operating Systems."

>
> Later,
> Jason
> _______________________________________________
> freebsd-chat at freebsd.org mailing list
> http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-chat
> To unsubscribe, send any mail to "freebsd-chat-unsubscribe at freebsd.org"
>

*----------------------------------------------------------*
   Kayven Riese, BSCS, MS (Physiology and Biophysics)
   (415) 902 5513 cellular
   http://kayve.net
   Webmaster http://ChessYoga.org
*----------------------------------------------------------*


More information about the freebsd-chat mailing list