You know there’s nothing quite so annoying than to have something to us newbies (remember, I’m a roofer by trade.. high school education, no advanced math whatsoever) be a bit of a challenge … try to cover all the bases as asked , check the FAQ…. go to the mailing list….. check the home page…. Google it…. than to go to some Forum or IRC channel… and have someone belittle us.. or make assumptions….
This rant is a bit off course of the subject of this blog, however it’s still part of being a Linux NOOB so bear with me as I attempt to share my frustrations with you.
Last evening I had the misfortune of having the power supply go out on my main Linux desktop machine, Ubuntu linux. Unfortunately for me I’m no genius far from it…. I happened to be in an “unnamed” IRC channel and asked if a “livecd” could be used to access the hard drive of that broken machine … but wasn’t exacting in my question as they misunderstood me thinking that I was trying to access the main hard drive of the livecd system
Anyway they came away thinking , that I didn’t even know how to mount a filesystem.. and it took me a few minutes to explain to them that that wasn’t the issue… somehow I believed until this point that Linux was so secure that their would be issues when after I installed the hard drive out of the now dead box into this computer and tried to mount it that I would have to break security to access those files . Anyway they read into my ignorance about physical access that somehow I didn’t know what I was doing mounting a system. I wasn’t aware how vulnerable physical access to any hard drive was and that was translated into …. NOOB doesn’t even know how to cd to a diff directory…..
As great an operating system Linux is and continues to be there will always be someone who want’s to look down their noses at people who know less than them…. I’ve been roofing for 30 years and believe me I could show you a thing or two about commercial roof systems….
The point I’m trying to bring to the forefront is be prepared there are some trolls out there that seem to hang in the rooms for the purpose of making themselves feel better about themselves. They don’t miss the opportunity to humiliate those honestly trying to learn and making every attempt to solve their problem . On the same point, I have met some very wonderful truly helpful people on the Forums and IRC channels. It goes both ways just be prepared.
I’m working my way through the Basics part of the Linux User’s Guide and will be discussing that very point in the next part of this Blog thanks
