On Wed, 17 Nov 2010 23:00:08 -0500, Borden Rhodes wrote: (...)
> So, yes, software breaks. But that's okay because I'm patient and > understanding and I can usually recover from the crashes or work around > them... just as long as I believe that some day it'll be fixed and not > break anymore. Over the time, it will break again. > So, the idea, and the point of the subject of this > thread, is what do the public like me do when software breaks? Filling bugs and/or using another program while it gets fixed. > My thesis is that FLOSS software currently breaks in a way that doesn't > give me enough of the right symptoms to fix the problem myself or ask > for help intelligently. I've never reached such situation. When something goes wrong -and Google seems not solving the problem-, I explain the symptoms in mailing lists or forums, attach the logs and get feedback. > If anyone still doesn't believe me, I'll > subscribe you to my computer logs and a commentary of my problems! You'll have first to explain what your problem is. > So, what I want are better symptoms from software. Ideally, I want an > error message which I can plug into Google and be directed to a probable > cause of the problem. I can usually handle things from there. The nature of the problem may prevent this from happening. For instance, a hardware failure (bad ram or damaged micro, lack of power, loose cable...), can be very difficult to register in your logs or for getting a warning message box. Your system can give you "hints" but nowadays it won't tell you: "hey, this happens because your sata #3 hard disk cable flaws, please correct". IBM is (was?) working on self-diagnosis system software that "heal" by themselves... so in a near future your wishes could be materialized :-) > Currently, I can't tell what error messages and log entries are related > to a problem I'm having. Worse, if I plug the error message into > Google, I get directed to old source repositories, bug reports totally > unrelated to my problem, flame wars and a tedious variety of dead ends > and wild goose chases. Surely there must be a better way to > troubleshoot FLOSS! The success in problem solving is proportionally related to the interest in getting solved. Nobody will care if you don't care... > Finally, I don't care how software reaches this utopian state. It can > be top-down, bottom-up, sideways, revolutionary, explosive or any which > organisation or movement or argument or death threat which lets me > participate in the community without having to specialise in computer > science. You can participate in the communitity in many ways that require no advanced skills in computer science: mailing lists support, translation and documentation, design... Greetings, -- Camaleón -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/pan.2010.11.18.07.26...@gmail.com
