Re: [gentoo-user] Re: 4 machines - no /dev/cdrom or /dev/dvd anymore

[Mark Knecht <markknecht@gmail.com>]

On Tue, Jan 8, 2013 at 1:21 AM, Alan McKinnon <alan.mckinnon@gmail.com> wrote:
<SNIP>
> 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.
<SNIP>
> --
> 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'.

   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.

Over and out,
Mark