[SLL] All my 64bit Ubuntu's stopped booting...so far my 32bit UbuntuME still goes

[Chuck Wolber]

On Thu, 20 Dec 2007, Howard Gibson wrote:

>    With my Linux boxes, I have a three hour rule.  If I cannot fix a 
> Linux box in well below three hours, I reformat the root partition and 
> re-install everything.  The Linux install takes three hours.  The beauty 
> of Free Software is that I have the install media, and there are no 
> licensing issues.


Guys you're missing something crucial with an attitude like that. Please 
read on with an open mind...

In the olden days people had a tendency to persist with problems and 
gained much by solving them. Unfortunately, due to the closed source 
model, knowledge gained was never fed back to improve future releases 
unless it was profitable for the company to do so.


"But hang on a second man, we have hundreds of servers, we just don't have 
the time!"


"These systems are sooooo much more complex than the systems of yore. It'd 
take days to do what used to take hours!"


Sure, I can see your point, but if you're still saying that, then you miss 
the point of OSS development and your responsibility as a technical user. 

I didn't want to argue this with Xeno earlier because I think he's stuck 
in the Windows mindset. I'll make it clear here - Whether or not Linux 
itself is better than Windows is irrelevant. What matters is the 
development model.

Maybe not a lot of you remember, but Windows NT 3.x was actually a lot 
better in terms of performance than the 2.2 Linux kernel. It had plenty of 
other problems, but performance was not one of them. Did you see all of 
the Linux developers throw up their hands and run away? Nope. It really 
was embarassing, but the community did what it does best. It made Linux 
better. A closed source company would have looked at the *HUGE* cost to 
overcome that performance gap and done what they do best, receed into a 
niche market and eventually die off.


So it really comes down to two options:

1. Persist with a problem, solve it once and then push a fix (or 
suggestion) upstream. Even if the OSS project ignores your input, Google 
will make sure it's available to others.

2. If you don't solve it in 3 hours, reinstall and don't waste time making 
the community aware of the problem.



Here's the overall message I hope this has conveyed:

1) As a technical user, you have a responsibility to support the OSS 
ecosystem. Don't gloss over problems with a re-install. Persist with them. 
Ask for help, tell everyone about your successes and make suggestions for 
how to do things better. If you don't get an answer, you probably asked a 
good question the wrong way. Read ESRs FAQ on asking smart questions, 
you'll be amazed at how much it helps:

http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html


2) If your employer wants you to stop spending so much time on problems, 
consider what your employer will be losing in an employee who robotically 
glosses things over. If *YOU'RE* tired of spending so much time on 
problems, consider that you may not really enjoy your job as much as you 
think you do. Sure, the pay may be good, but get out of the way and let 
someone enthusiastic take your place. Life is short...


3) After persisting with problems, you actually do get better at solving 
them. I've been playing with Linux since 1995 and I've never had to 
re-install to fix a problem. That's not bragging, anyone can get that way. 
The first few years, I can remember taking days to solve problems. These 
days, it's rare for problems to take very long at all. After a while you 
just get a gut feeling and things get easier. It's like the "Zen of Linux 
Repair".

4) Linux is not better that Windows. The development model is.


..Chuck..


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