Comment by dotancohen
5 years ago
> What is the value of "is competent enough to copy paste commands from a wiki?".
Because without that filter you are getting feedback from, at best, people who cannot even copy paste commands from a wiki.
5 years ago
> What is the value of "is competent enough to copy paste commands from a wiki?".
Because without that filter you are getting feedback from, at best, people who cannot even copy paste commands from a wiki.
You might be surprised how many people are out there which can't even read a wiki close enough to follow instructions in it.
Plus in my experience a lot of Arch users don't just "copy past instructions" they also somewhat understand why this instructions are needed, the Arch Wiki is grate as a resource for setting up things when you understand what you do, but it's often terrible when you just want a step by step guide.
Any way the main benefit of Arch is that it's close to stable upstream repose, instead of sometimes lacking not just month but even years behind wrt. the version of libraries they ship.
>Any way the main benefit of Arch is that it's close to stable upstream repose, instead of sometimes lacking not just month but even years behind wrt. the version of libraries they ship.
There is a downside that most Arch users omit intentionally, when you get latest GNOME/App with the cool new bug fixes and cool new features you also get the new not cool bugs and the new redesign/feature removal. This can cause the system not to boot if the kernel/graphics driver is updated in incompatible ways.
LTS distros with years behind features is in many casea a feature many appreciate. 2
I've been using Arch since ~8 years and at least for me updates breaking stuff is rare, and every time it happens there was a simple easy work around the problem (like downgrading for a day or two at which point the bug was fixed).
Through without question a major reason why the (few) problems I did ran into haven't been a problem was due to my understanding of Linux.
The is the misconception that Arch is bleeding edge, it's not. It's the latest stable releases of the software it composed of. And at least for my use cast the amount of headache it reduces by doing so far outweighs the amount of problems I ran into (which are in my experience few, and iff you have the necessary skills normally easy to work around).
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Arch probably has a lower share of GNOME users than your average distro.
I’ve been using the Arch Linux Archive as a way to stick with a known stable system for a few weeks until I have time to dedicate to a system upgrade and correcting any issues that arise.
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Arch Wiki is so great enough that even users of distros other than Arch read it.
That is still a pathetic filter , "I know to read and I know to copy paste", I still believer that the good reports are not from the copy-paste ,I run Arch to be cool group but from technical people that run Linux(any distro).
> I know to read and I know to copy paste
You'd be surprised. I've seen many arrogant users try to install Arch and fail because they were literally incapable of reading and understanding the simple instructions written on the Arch Wiki. Even technical users of other distributions. Sometimes they use an installer and manage to get a working system with no effort... Only for it to stop working because they failed to read the news and some update required manual intervention. If I remember correctly, users are required to provide pacman output as a form of CAPTCHA in order to create an Arch Wiki account. They must prove they installed Arch in order to edit the wiki.
A certain degree of elitism is great, no matter the community. Arch Linux users are expected to be responsible for their own systems, it's expected that they will take care of it and maintain it. People who can't or won't do this are better off using something else.
The bar can be as low as it wants to if it effectively filters people out. It's like how fizzbuzz is a terrible stupid test until you realize the shocking number of people who claim to be developers but can't pass it.
We would need to do a rigorous test though to see if this low bar is significant, you would have 4 groups of people
- Windows tech people(c/c++ developers) - Linux tech people(c/c++ devs and sys admins) - Arch non tech people that copy pasted instructions - any other OS or distro non tech people
then see if the Arch copy paste-rs are closer to non tech people or closer to tech people. The assumption is that since they can read instructions would create better bug reports, but is also possible they would be over -confident elitist-ic dudes that use weird packages and broke the program with their copy pasting of commands and installing garbage from AUR;
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Yet, something like 95% of all desktop users can't do that. You, presumably, disproportionally interact with tech people. Typical office worker might encounter problem that requires terminal once in a year at which point sysadmin is called. And it`s not only about reading and copy pasting it's about ability to devote pretty large amount of attention to a task.
For someone to find the wiki, read it and then attempt to solve their problem in a rudimentary fashion gets you towards the tail end of the bell curve. They might even follow up with you if you have questions.
Nah, is super easy to find the Arch wiki and the install instructions, Arch users will push you hard to it so is impossible not to find it, maybe you might find some honest person though to explain the downsides too.
I'm assuming you don't generally do front-end work, because many many users are complete [insert PC word for zero capacity for rational thought].
I do interact with customers, but I would rather get a bug report from a Kubuntu users that knows the difference between a compiler and a linker then from a 12 years old that managed to copy paste instructions into a command prompt.
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Being able to read and follow instructions is the main skill required to be a good bug reporter.