Monique, > I'm a little confused at this point.
I'm always confused--it's when I understand something that confuses me even more ;-) > I originally assumed you were the OP, but skimming the archives, it > appears that you are not. I wasn't. > But then you also mention your own troubles, to which I see no > previous reference in this thread. What am I missing? When something as catastrophic as what happened gets entered into Sid, i.e. something really big and well used just goes belly up, I tend to assume that other people share the same problem. If it were "the_most_obscure_least_popular_packae.deb" then I'd understand people getting upset about a statement that went: "I just did an upgrade in a machine running sid and after that can't star[t] a gnome terminal anymore." However, in this case, one of the bigger, more widely used desktops just suddenly went belly up. Gnome's not an obscure package, and gnome-terminal strikes me as something that lots of Debian users would notice had just died. > The original poster posted a statement, not a question. The statement > was, "I just did an upgrade in a machine running sid and after that > can't star a gnome terminal anymore." :-) > Now, granted, rudeness was probably uncalled for, but what legitemate > response would you expect? If one isn't feeling terribly helpful but really, really, really has to say something: "I'm running Sid too and I've noticed that gnome-terminal isn't starting but I don't have the time to diagnose the problem for you. Could you please post more information?" ...or if one is feeling slightly more helpful: "I'm running Sid too and I've noticed this problem. Mine is related to a problem with the package fontconfig and libbonobo-activation4. You might try searching bugs.debian.org for these two packages. If you still can't work it out, then try to tell us more information and then we can help you out." > No version numbers or error messages were given. Look, the problem should have been so OBVIOUS that it wouldn't take a Doctorate in Computer Science for someone who is running Sid to work out that there's something wrong with gnome-terminal and such. Admittedly the question was in bad form but really - I doubt that this bug is an obscure hard to find one. > No question was actually asked, so your guess is as good as mine as to > whether they want a work-around or simply want to know when the package > will be fixed. I'm sorry - someone who stated something akin to what was said is obviously either asking for a work around and/or wanting to know when the package will be fixed. I wouldn't have asked the question in such a manner--I've been fried by the Debian community before for asking perfectly reasonable, well set out, documented questions only to be told: "Oh, you're running Sid. Ha ha ha! You should know better." I mean, I'd discovered a legitimate problem and was using the tools available (man pages, /usr/share/doc/, google and bugs.debian.org) and summarised what I did AND attempted to kludge a fix for it. And that's what I got for my troubles? *grumbles* > I haven't seen a single message saying, "Neener, neener, I know the > answer but I won't tell you!" Maybe I haven't been paying enough > attention? I think the fix is in "incoming"... > opposite. What I have found is that people on this list, and every > technical list in which I've ever participated, expect that you at least > try the most basic trouble-shooting before you ask a question. If you > don't understand a command, have you read the man page and the provided > docs? If you are having a problem with an application, have you at > least bothered to figure out what version you're running? The OP (original poster) probably should have done a little more legwork or at least managed to post exactly went wrong with gnome-terminal. I grant that. But just how are you going to NOT encourage brain-dead questions when you won't take a little time thoughtfully prodding the person asking a valid question [yes, asking a question such as "gnome-terminal has suddenly come up with some libbonobo-activation4 error and I don't fully understand the bug report against it" is a valid question in my opinion]? An onlist: "Well, maybe you should tell us BLAH?" response "Ah, now I see what's wrong. This is what's wrong [or a link to some site that says what's wrong]." Not everybody thinks the same and sometimes seeing an online to and fro about how particular people diagnosed particular problems can be quite useful. Certainly more useful than: * have you checked bugs.debian.org? The legitimate answer to that could be "for what?" > No one wants to encourage brain-dead questions. Even a modicum of > effort is generally well-rewarded. So it is :-) DSL -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
