From owner-freebsd-newbies Tue Dec 21 6:37: 1 1999 Delivered-To: freebsd-newbies@freebsd.org Received: from fourier.dotstar.net (fourier.dotstar.net [208.143.93.20]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 37B1A15423 for ; Tue, 21 Dec 1999 06:36:55 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from tymbrwlf@bellsouth.net) Received: from lhawk ([208.143.93.73]) by fourier.dotstar.net (Post.Office MTA v3.5.3 release 223 ID# 0-63143U2500L250S0V35) with SMTP id net for ; Tue, 21 Dec 1999 08:36:37 -0600 Message-ID: <002401bf4bc0$e0facc80$2e00040a@lhawk> Reply-To: "Larry Hawk" From: "Larry Hawk" To: References: <000701bf4b1d$c76ff040$8ec101ca@bandhu> <19991221003256.D6B8E639F7@zagnut.hotpop.com> <004901bf4ba0$4bb38510$827e03cb@ORACLE> Subject: Re: Experiences Date: Tue, 21 Dec 1999 08:37:15 -0600 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Priority: 3 X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook Express 5.00.2919.6600 X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V5.00.2919.6600 Sender: owner-freebsd-newbies@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.org My biggest frustration is with the IRC channels and some of the newsgroups. There have been several times where I have a simple question about something that might take someone 5 minutes to help me with and all they can do is say "hey newbie, MAN ". It's almost like the automatic assumption is that I DON'T try to figure something out on my own before I ask. For example, I was having a big problem getting Samba to work on an NT network and, as it turns out, all I needed to do was change ONE option in my smb.conf file. It took me two weeks to figure this out on my own, and countless beratings (sp?) from (supposed) UNIX know-it-alls. I think that their logic is the whole "give a man a fish, feed him for a day. teach a man to fish, feed him for life" thing. But what they seem to forget is that everybody is a newbie at sometime and helping someone out might actually give them a jump on something else that they're having problems with. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise; UNIX is very complex. I thought the whole idea of the FreeBSD community was to promote FreeBSD, but when new folks get stuck and can't get help, then they're very likely to just say "Screw this! Windows does what I want. I don't need this kind of frustration!". Then you've just sent away a potential user and they'll probably never come back and try again. Unfortunately, not every potential FreeBSD user is a 23 year old college computer major, who hacks code for their research paper. Most of us are competent PC users who want to explore other alternatives besides MS. I am a NT Admin and I consider myself pretty darn knowledgeable about PCs, but my background is 100% MS, so *NIX is very alien to me, so I can't really draw on past experience to help me very much. But I'm learning and I'm quite proud of my progress. Now in all fairness, there were many people who offered to help me. And if it weren't for them I might have given up and throw the FreeBSD CDs in the trash, but they didn't discourage or belittle me. They tried to help and that's were the whole "community" parts comes in. Sorry for rambling. I just had to vent a little.... Larry Hawk tymbrwlf@bellsouth.net To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-newbies" in the body of the message