SWAT's blog

OK, this is probably one set of rules that isn’t written down often enough. Today (again) somebody on the IRC channel mentioned that Ubuntu was great, but still wasn’t good at ‘media’. I disagreed and asked him why he had that opinion. After a short while I asked him which hardware he uses, and the hardware was ‘the big evil’. In contrast to Windows, which has driver (hardware) support from almost any hardware vendor, but you have to do an extra step if you want to run Linux without too many frustrations. Most hardware vendors don’t support Linux and don’t work together with the kernel developers, who make the hardware support possible.
Luckily Pascal de Bruijn made a very good start by meantioning a lot of tips that we ‘know’. I made some additions and changes to that list and here it comes:

Common rules of thumb

• Don’t buy hardware that has been on the market for less than six months. The developers need time to make drivers if the hardware is more or less largely adapted.
• Don’t buy lowbudget hardware, since they usually have less (driver) support
• Don’t buy anything with a SiS/ALi/ULi chip, since they are mostly not supported
• Buy A-brand hardware (or B-brand hardware if you have carefully reviewed all specifications)
• Take the latest Ubuntu LiveCD with you to the computer store and check if the CD starts/works and if the hardware is recognized (DO NOT INSTALL ANYTHING!) if you are planning on buying a laptop or pre-built computer

NIC’s

• Intel has great drivers and is preferred
• Realtek also has great drivers for almost any chipset and is preferred
• Broadcom will usually work, but if possible get an Intel or Realtek
• There are WLAN cards which are supported through MadWifi (take a look at their supported cards list)

Graphics

• Nvidia has good drivers (if you want to play games, buy an Nvidia card)
• ATI has mediocre drivers
• Intel has good drivers, but I wouldn’t play games on it

Printers

• Check OpenPrinting BEFORE you buy the printer!

Laptops

• I’ve only bought one laptop yet, and it was an Hewlett-Packard and all of the hardware works. HP is also a great brand, since it often supports Linux. I recommend it!

That’s all folks!

Frustrations:

Let me start with the fact that this is my blog depicting my personal opinion. Having that said, I often find myself in the situation in which I turn away from someone asking help on IRC. Why? Because I would otherwise would like to say: “RTFM”. Why? Because it’s a very short acronym, for people who ask questions that are perfectly documented. Luckily the IRC bot ‘uboto’ helps, by providing a few standard lines for those who are still asking some documented questions. This really lowers the frustration for those trying to help.
Nevertheless, I’ve been experiencing this phenomenon for quite some time now, even far beyond the borders of IRC. Nobody actually takes the time anymore to search for an answer and just asks, because it’s less work for them. On the other side, it’s more work for us! Furthermore people do not read the howto’s/documentation/etc. carefully or even the tips/solutions that are given them. This can be very frustrating for someone who’s trying to help you in their spare time. Since this seems a very general phenomenon, please help educating the people by not providing the actual links, but let them make that extra step themselves. Just tell them to search for ‘some searchengine query’ and click on the 5th result or search for ‘some wiki entry’ on the Ubuntu wiki. They won’t like it, but next time they’ll probably search the wiki first.
Getting help:

OK, I am feeling much better. Let me continue with something else. If you want to be helped by someone on IRC (or perhaps anywhere else) please

1. search the wiki first
2. search the forums
3. search using a search engine and avoid bad software like Automatix and Envy

If you still haven’t found your answer, you can state your problem and solutions you have already tried briefly. If someone feels that you have put effort into fixing your problem, you have a bigger chance of getting some help. Note: this still does not guarantee help.
You should always use proper netiquette, when you’re asking for help on IRC. There are also a few other tips:

• Do not join the channel, ask your question and quit a few minutes later. Wait for an answer, which can take quite a while (read: hours)
• Do not suddenly join a conversation and try to help, while ‘your’ questions have been asked seconds earlier. If you have just joined the channel, wait a while before helping people.
• Do not use ‘chat’ language. Try to speak proper English (or in my situation Dutch)
• Do not ‘paste’ any output longer than 2 lines to the channel. Use pastebin!
• Try to keep your sentences long. It’s easier to read 1 long sentence, than 5 short ones. It also makes it easier for us to ‘read back’.
• Actually read and try the possible solutions that are provided
• Please don’t ask “Why this?” or “Why that?” all the time. Some things aren’t easily explained. We can either focus on answering your technical questions or provide you with possible solutions for your problems. If you are eager to learn, please search the internet.
• Please… Please, check your grammar. You would not believe how many grammatical errors we see every day. This does not include real typos
• Do not spam or ‘test’ the bot. You can PM him.

One more frustration:

One thing I have found really annoying about mailingslists are the people who mail the mailinglist with the question: “Please unsubscribe me”. This is, again, a sign that people do not read. In the first e-mail you get from the mailinglist, it states how to unsubscribe and gives you a lot of information. So please don’t bother us with something we can not do for you. And if we tell you, that you have to unsubscribe yourself, just do it!
Correct behaviour?

That felt great, I’ve got it off my chest now. It’s better to ‘vent’ it here, than ‘venting’ it on the people you are trying to help. Some of these situations could require a “RTFM” answer, but that’s usually not given. Often a softer approach is better by telling the person to ‘search the internet’ or ‘read the documentation’. This is, in my perspective, CoC approved behaviour. But how far should we take it with being ‘nice’?