Featured Comments: Week of 2010 December 26

There was only one post last week that garnered comments, but there were a lot of comments. (I find it interesting that most of last week was part of last year.)

Apologies about the Slackware Review

Reader dick had a long comment, so I'm only repeating part of it: "Just a suggestion if you try Arch. I did a couple of years ago and found it really an interesting period of time. I tried first on my own and had no success at all. Then I stumbled across a website called Raiden, if I remember right. Raiden had a huge instruction manual on how to install Arch from beginning to end. It was great as it answered all my questions and pointed me in the right direction. Slight problem with getting X to work but other than that it was not bad at all. The distro itself is great. Worked like a charm for a bit until someone put an update in the wrong place and it hosed my installation. [...]"
Reader John had this advice if I try Slackware again in the future: "Slackware is not a distro for newbies, that's for sure. I tried it several years ago when I first switched to Linux and was totally lost. After a couple of years of using Linux I decided to try it again but used Zenwalk to do it. It made life simpler for me. Then I did switch to Slackware 13.0 its self and found that I could use it. It gives you all of the basics and that is about it. I found the support on the forum and the instructions found through the site to be friendly and helpful. You should have visited slackbuilds.org. You can build almost anything from there. And that is what you should expect to do with Slackware. I did move from there to Salix which is pure Slackware. You should give it a try, it is Slackware made easy. You will find some very friendly and helpful people there with a growing repository of software to use."
An anonymous commenter had a thought about me trying to cultivate a positive reputation in this blog: " The sad thing about this...how correct you are on how the Linux community approaches users. I find usually merciless and condescending. They say there two types of people that fly. Those who get air sick and those who have yet to get airsick. I kinda approach Linux users the same way. Those that have an problem and those that yet have a problem. "Newbie" and "Pro" are arbitrary status'. This is always from the point of the observer. Either way, I think you are on the way to gaining the reputation as an honest person concerning Linux it's "quirks". Just a thought."
Commenter DoctorPepper had quite a few helpful links regarding Slackware, along with a couple other thoughts: "Slackware was my third distro, back in the late 1990's (Red Hat -> Mandrake -> Slackware), and it was a bit easier for me to deal with, having cut my teeth, so to speak, on the other two. Back then you still had to do a lot of compiling to get extra software installed, but these days it is somewhat easier."
Reader Sum Yung Gal said, among other things, "I use Slackware mostly on my laptops. The reason for this is that it's just easier, as a technical engineer, for me to do things with it than with Ubuntu, Red Hat/Fedora, or most other distros. For me, wireless connectivity is just easier with Slackware. When I do things "the Slackware way", I can do them on any other distro as well as the BSD's. Everything is pretty much the standard UNIX way, which I like. Now, would I have Aunt Tillie the teacher on it? No, not typically, unless it's in an LTSP-style thin-client environment where I, the sysadmin, can control what the users see."
Commenter V. T. Eric Layton had this to say about Slackware and the two posts I wrote: " Prashanth, I don't believe you should be apologizing for your review of Slackware 13.1. You did a fine job of writing your review. Reviews are nothing more than a reviewer's opinion. I think you did a fine job of expressing yours. Slackware is not a distribution that I recommend to new Linux Adventurers. Most folks are GUI dependent, having come over from MS Windows. It's best for them to get acquainted with Linux using a kinder and gentler distro such as Ubuntu, Linux Mint, etc. Slackware isn't designed to be the "all things to everyone" type distribution. It's the oldest still maintained distribution of GNU/Linux. It is based on the philosophy of stability and simplicity. What you saw as complications and annoyances are the reason those of us who use Slackware as a primary operating system love it. Feature richness inherently includes complexity. Complexity walks hand in hand with fault and failure. The more simple something is, the less likely it is to fail. This is why Debian is also a rock solid platform. The more bells and whistles, the more there is to break. It's just the way it is."
An anonymous commenter said, " No need to apologize. I am a Linux noob as well, but I've been running Slackware for over a year as my only distro. Contrary to what you said in the comments of your other post, I don't run Slack because I'm too lazy to try Arch. Slackware is not a larval state distro from which people will depart once they find a better one. In my opinion, it IS the best one. There's a saying about Linux that I think fits Slackware like a glove: 'Slackware IS user-friendly. It is NOT, however, idiot-friendly or ignorant-friendly.'"

Thanks to all those who commented this week. I will have a couple more reviews and other related posts coming up. Remember, if you like the material I write, please continue subscribing and commenting!

Apologies about the Slackware Review

A couple days ago, I reviewed Slackware 13.1. I wanted to see if I could use it post-installation, though from what I had read from commenters and writers on various blogs, it would be tough. At the end, it did prove to be as tough (and for me, fruitless) as I thought it would be. Though I did get to resolve a network connection issue, there wasn't really a whole lot interesting for me to see (other than a multitude of WMs in essentially vanilla form). Anyway, I wrote and published the review on this blog and it ended up in Linux Today and TuxMachines; owing to that, it got a lot of traffic and comments, most of which panned the lack of substance in the review.
It seems like most people who happened upon the review expected something substantive from a Slackware guru. Quite the opposite: I'm essentially a newbie who simply enjoys trying out different distributions from time to time. For letting down these readers (which is also a function of a lack of context, because though I make it clear on this blog that I am a newbie, that doesn't make it to Linux Today or TuxMachines), I am sorry.
Another mistake I made was expecting too much from Slackware. Usually, when I test distributions, I either expect a lot of things or nothing. For example, I would expect a lot of things out-of-the-box from a standard GNOME Ubuntu installation. I would not expect anything from Arch or Debian Standard. My mistake was associating Slackware included many WMs (especially KDE) out-of-the-box with many other niceties, like automatically configuring my network connection. I really should have included it in the group of distributions from which I expect nothing nice out-of-the-box. In addition, to make up for that, I probably should have read a good bit more about setting up Slackware post-installation. For these things, I am sorry.
However, there were quite a few comments that rhetorically asked why I chose to test Slackware if I knew that it wouldn't turn out so well. Well, the answer to that is that sometimes my expectations are defied (either way). In any case, I enjoy testing such expectations. In this case, my expectations (of a tough experience) were upheld. So please do tell me, is there anything wrong with that? It's either that, or I have seen the ugly side of the Linux community in the comments — the side that does not believe in helping out new users and only cares about those who already use Linux at the level of a trained professional. Maybe I've just been sheltered by the cordiality present in the Ubuntu and Linux Mint communities. Maybe it's just a matter of letting go of my innocence. But seriously, what's so horrible about having some expectations about Slackware, trying it out, and then writing about the experience?
In conclusion, I will say that this was probably a low point for this blog. Do not despair, as I have (better) reviews coming up in the coming days and weeks. I have learned my lesson with regard to Slackware, and you can be sure that I'll try not to make these mistakes again (especially if I get around to trying Arch).

Apologies about VirtualBox Testing

I remember seeing a couple comments spread out over reviews I've done in the past asking why I don't do my reviews now through actual live media. Well, the reason was that with my new laptop, for the longest time I thought that USB booting was a lost cause; furthermore, I didn't want to waste the few blank CDs and DVDs I had (and still have) on random distributions.
Well, I'm happy to report that I can in fact boot from USB on my laptop (and in fact, I'm writing this from a Linux Mint "Debian" 201009 GNOME live USB), and for this I need to apologize to those commenters who sincerely asked why I wasn't more sincere in my own distribution testing. I'm truly sorry that my laziness (in terms of actually taking time to look for an answer) mislead all of us. That said, testing with VirtualBox has been fun in its own way (and I may still do that with "light" distributions to see things like how little RAM they really need), but now that I know I can use live USBs in my laptop, I'll certainly be doing that, as I can now test things like USB support, 3D compositing support, and webcam support that I couldn't before.
Oh, and for the record, the issue was that I was manipulating the wrong BIOS submenu to give the USB device boot priority over the hard drive. Now I know...

2010 February 8: Rahm Emanuel and the Super Bowl

This is an update to the previous story on Rahm Emanuel's use of the word "retarded" to describe certain liberal groups.
He has since apologized and signed a pledge to end the use of this word. I applaud him for this, though he shouldn't have made the comment in the first place.
Also, Sarah Palin's outrage showed a rift in the conservative base. Many (though certainly not all) conservatives are opposed to being overly politically correct. Palin has made reference to this before as well. However, as this directly insulted her son, she felt the need to defend political correctness and in the process blast Rush Limbaugh for not supporting her. I'm not taking sides in this particular dispute; I just thought it's an interesting thing to see.

Also, the New Orleans Saints won Super Bowl XLIV! New Orleans really needed this one.

Since When Was Admitting a Problem "Coming Clean"?

This stems from the news from a variety of outlets reporting that Mark McGwire has publicly admitted and apologized for his steroid use.
This, after lying to these same news outlets (and Congress, no less) only a few years ago that he didn't use steroids and that this persistent questioning wouldn't help.
Are our expectations of celebrities (from all fields) really this low?
When I was a little kid, I learned that to "come clean" was to do something great to make up for a certain failing in the past. Admitting wrongdoing is the first step, apologizing the second, and coming clean (by making up for it) the third.
Is it too much to ask McGwire to really come clean (and not just "come clean" as the media describes just admitting his steroid use)? Perhaps he could do community service and stuff like that, as Zinedine Zidane did after the World Cup (he announced his retirement after that series before the series started) final match where he headbutted Marco Materazzi in response to a provocation from the latter still unclear today.

Socialist Education! Oh noes!

The big news this week was President Obama's address to students of all ages and their parents about education.
The bigger news was that prominent Republicans were lambasting it before they even knew what it was going to say. They claimed that Obama was going to "indoctrinate" schoolchildren in "leftist socialist ideologies".
Then, of course, Obama gave his speech. It was a speech that made sense - it was about students taking responsibility for their own education and for them to keep trying at it even when the going gets tough.
There was no hint of liberal ideology. In fact, personal responsibility is something many (now deceased) rational conservatives used to espouse. They should be proud.
Furthermore, the same conservatives who blasted the speech prior to its delivery without any basis changed course and praised it afterwards without any apology for bad prior judgment.
Why is this?