From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: from lists.gentoo.org (pigeon.gentoo.org [208.92.234.80]) by finch.gentoo.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 5952E138379 for ; Tue, 8 Jan 2013 21:18:33 +0000 (UTC) Received: from pigeon.gentoo.org (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by pigeon.gentoo.org (Postfix) with SMTP id C869D21C023; Tue, 8 Jan 2013 21:18:17 +0000 (UTC) Received: from mail-wg0-f47.google.com (mail-wg0-f47.google.com [74.125.82.47]) (using TLSv1 with cipher ECDHE-RSA-RC4-SHA (128/128 bits)) (No client certificate requested) by pigeon.gentoo.org (Postfix) with ESMTPS id 1331821C006 for ; Tue, 8 Jan 2013 21:16:49 +0000 (UTC) Received: by mail-wg0-f47.google.com with SMTP id dq11so653775wgb.26 for ; Tue, 08 Jan 2013 13:16:48 -0800 (PST) DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha256; c=relaxed/relaxed; d=gmail.com; s=20120113; h=x-received:date:from:to:subject:message-id:in-reply-to:references :organization:x-mailer:mime-version:content-type :content-transfer-encoding; bh=fadKyHBIutp/eUZ58KFdticAOXZpwRStxuLYCarK5k8=; b=KBG7ql+VXPICA+kD1BYlnrQvd+rZpqjMG3IpdAbVAVmI6XWIBilCYgQn88Cx/ykMEA zwHe1qGH1YXt0NPpnsPw54aAAl6dp8f2rSzrp/FbdIWx0do74dAyMLwDGTLfookYe+mo Gh/u4FswgruUDCe2QjV8cekg+cbkmQIgUna3otzSA2F/KrX6fGzF7UUupR01ef1giP3R zpYpfhNqYiSC1gtQFRJY5rTd43yz46wDp/3ZLAp9wySIoaTvbXTte0sy6LN83Zq6z0IL dpX8uX90w11kdk9W5OxodlmwBqJf351iOoWYxtBsCra/7fn2galOGEZUWmLBwD60oWtI TGLQ== X-Received: by 10.194.123.105 with SMTP id lz9mr104507872wjb.43.1357679808668; Tue, 08 Jan 2013 13:16:48 -0800 (PST) Received: from khamul.example.com (196-210-238-77.dynamic.isadsl.co.za. [196.210.238.77]) by mx.google.com with ESMTPS id s16sm1216136wii.0.2013.01.08.13.16.45 (version=SSLv3 cipher=RC4-SHA bits=128/128); Tue, 08 Jan 2013 13:16:47 -0800 (PST) Date: Tue, 8 Jan 2013 23:12:25 +0200 From: Alan McKinnon To: gentoo-user@lists.gentoo.org Subject: Re: [gentoo-user] Re: 4 machines - no /dev/cdrom or /dev/dvd anymore Message-ID: <20130108231225.16ffb405@khamul.example.com> In-Reply-To: References: <201301061119.56710.michaelkintzios@gmail.com> <50EA2364.4080604@gmail.com> <20130108012533.04004d12@khamul.example.com> <20130108112157.3cb99168@khamul.example.com> Organization: Internet Solutions X-Mailer: Claws Mail 3.9.0 (GTK+ 2.24.14; x86_64-pc-linux-gnu) Precedence: bulk List-Post: List-Help: List-Unsubscribe: List-Subscribe: List-Id: Gentoo Linux mail X-BeenThere: gentoo-user@lists.gentoo.org Reply-to: gentoo-user@lists.gentoo.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Archives-Salt: 89b2479c-8ed1-4e0e-9e70-5e8ad17dc85a X-Archives-Hash: 16718451728f92a8565c78dba803b6c6 On Tue, 8 Jan 2013 12:26:04 -0800 Mark Knecht wrote: > On Tue, Jan 8, 2013 at 1:21 AM, Alan McKinnon > wrote: > > Life is full of silly and not-so-silly conventions and /dev/dvd is > > one of them. It has no good reason to be there, and equally no good > > reason to not be there, but you already fixed your stuff to make it > > do what you want. > > > -- > > Alan McKinnon > > Alan, > Maybe in the future you'll consider this story: For your > entertainment, please imagine an 82 year old woman who, unknown to > anyone, has somehow gone beyond simple web browsing and email and > managed to teach herself to watch a DVD on her Gentoo laptop. Possibly > she is hard of hearing? This works well for her as she can use > headphones and listen at levels that work for her any time of day or > night. Once you get your head around that picture, please imagine this > user being frustrated for _months_ when her 'no good reason to be > there DVD' goes away. This user feels, for no good technical reason, > that she has somehow hurt her computer and worse worries about the > costs of fixing it. She remains silent, doesn't ask for help and loses > access to something that she enjoys all because someone in the dev > community decides to 'make a change'. I see what you want to communicate with that story, it's just not a circumstance unique to Gentoo or even Linux. All computers and all operating systems that upgrade go through the same thing, be it Windows, Ubuntu, MacOS, Android, iOS, the other IOS, the whole lot of them do this and break stuff if you let them update. MacOS has most certainly got to be the worst - they almost have an official policy to break APIs wantonly for fun and never supporting the breakage past the next version. Windows fares best as the corporate customers insist of a large measure of backwards compatibility. Unfortunately that is the nature of today's connected world. There is a way around it though, which is to not update the software and apply only bug and security fixes. Think Ubuntu LTS here - that would nicely solve the problem for the non-tech-savvy 82 year old and it's a good compromise: no sudden unexplained changes together with a good degree of safety But for your own use you have chosen Gentoo with it's implicit agreement that you will keep both pieces. You've always been upfront about your use case and why you chose Gentoo, and I took notice. It's now quite a few years down the track and you are still here. The ricers have all come and gone[1], but Mark is still here. Apparently Gentoo still suits his needs for the most part, and he's dealing with Gentoo just fine. > Not every user (of Gentoo or any other distro) lives in the > rarefied world of a Linux Sys Admin, much less the far more lowly and > infinitely more mundane world I inhabit. My experience is that people > almost always need a little help and almost never ask. I'll tell you a short story in return. Over the festive period I had need to describe myself briefly. Without thinking I blurted out "Borderline bipolar, OCD and somewhat Emo...". I'm not really into self-diagnosis, but that description seems to fit. I know I shoot my mouth off too often, but you shouldn't take it personally. Software is engineering - there's a few ways it can be done right, and lots of ways it can be done wrong (all fully documented...). When I talk about these things I usually forget I'm talking to people, not machines. So I apologize for my tone - I could have said the same thing in a very different way and gotten a very different result. I would so much prefer to not draw comparisons between sysadmins and users - experience teaches that nothing good comes out of that. If you describe yourself as a regular user then that's cool by me, I'd just like to point out again that many years later you are still here and the ricers aren't - that's gotta count for something. For my part, I think you contribute more back to this community than you might give yourself credit for. "Mere user" is not a good description of where you fit in [1] I'm not sure where that crowd all went.... they migrated en-masse to Ubuntu a while back, then to Fedora. I think they might be hanging out at Arch currently... -- Alan McKinnon alan.mckinnon@gmail.com