Threads that are not positive towards your distro

[KiwiNZ]

I recently observed the reactions to a thread that was stating a negative opinion concerning Fedora. I have noted a trend (and it is not limited to this forum) that if posters speak positively about the distro then its OK , if they speak negatively then they are trolls and the thread is closed.

If Linux oops Fedora is to be taken seriously the community must take critism in a mature manner. Industry leaders ( I recently heard this at an address by Novell) put up sites like these EG Fedora Forum , Ubuntu Forum as vital to the support and promotion of the Distro.

If users put forward a post that is negative it is likely to be a result of their experience. These folks need to be listened to and efforts made to gain further information .
responses such as ....
"you like made two flaws in this statement
1. Linux is kernel, you meant Fedora as distribution...
2. Linux already has a big place in commercial world"

Are pedantic and more likely to promote irrational debate as opposed to constructive discussion.

I agree that there is trolls , but not all "anti-Linux" posters are trolls.

With the growing penetration of Linux based distros into the maimstream market, Forums need to be more receptive to opposing opinion and the statements like "Fedora is working for us and thats all we need to know" are not really appropriate.

Just the thoughts of a Kiwi

[dickinsd]

Hello, I have never noticed any negative behaviour on this board, I think very highly of the other members of this community.

I wonder if you could point me to one such post?

Dave

[bob]

You make some valid points. Certainly Fedora is not perfect; it's a testing ground and there is a lot of criticism that is deserved and needed to help improve the distro. When someone has a valid point or asks a question when he is obviously 'frustrated', our members try to respond and help out.

However, there are times that a post smells a little fishy. If a person is completely down on the distro AND it's his first post AND he doesn't stay around to discuss things... well, it sure seems like a troll. The REAL problem with a suspected troll is that it takes time and effort away from people who really need the help with their problems and if you simply let the thread go on and on while members are pointing out mistakes and making defenses, others suffer.

Thanks for expressing your opinion. It's needed.

[sailor]

I closed the thread in question because it was going nowhere and the responses were all negative and my response was too...I deleted my negative response and closed the thread. The post was a troll in my opinion and at best a childish rant against fedora. The post is still there for all to read...unless it gets deleted by other staff.
*please note that the post was that members first post so we know that he never asked for help. He made erroneous statements as well. So he joined the forum to just to complain? I think deleting the post would have been justified, but I would rather foks see for themselves*

[dickinsd]

Ah, I see.

Well its a shame that someone feels this way, can I ask what you mean by a troll?

I have made some negative posts here. I know that in the past I have been sucked into some hole that I can't get out of, nothing is working, and I am sick of looking at a command line, I have posted a couple of questions, followed by a 'I hate Fedora' post.

But With the help of this community and others, I have managed to stick with it, and I am really happy I have managed to stick with it.

I think there are two reasons for a forum like this:

1. To share information and help one another
2. To encourage 'self help' by pointing people in the direction of where they may get help from, so that they can overcome the problem them selves.

I currently have this appetite for Linux in general, Fedora is simply my favourite, followed closely by Ubuntu,

Back to the point, this forum, and the community behind it, is one of the best forums I have ever used.

Dave

PS: Again, what is a Troll - or more to the point what is a Forum Troll?

[KiwiNZ]

Dont get me wrong , I believe this Forum is great and of the examples I used were for convenience.
The thrust of my post was that we just have to be say customer focused.

This is something that I am promoting on a Forum I am a moderator for .

[sailor]

I usually try to ignore negative trolling posts...and I was kinda ashamed at what I wrote in response to his post...so I deleted mine. But the more I looked at it I felt it would probably only get the same kind of responses because it was just so totally out of line.

troll (a better definition)

An electronic mail message, Usenet posting or other
(electronic) communication which is intentionally incorrect,
but not overtly controversial (compare flame bait), or the
act of sending such a message. Trolling aims to elicit an
emotional reaction from those with a hair-trigger on the reply
key. A really subtle troll makes some people lose their
minds.

[dickinsd]

Oh, thanks for letting me know :p

Dave

[crackers]

Sorry, dickinsd, you're not a troll. :D

But I agree with sailor's assessment: one post, containing nothing but a rant and some rather derogatory language (which I edited), and some very inaccurate stuff that pretty much indicated that the poster had not actually used FC, nor read any posts here, or elsewhere.

[Shadow Skill]

This usually happens when people know something is weak when juxtaposed to something comparable or an actual reality. For example there appears to be a bit of resistance on the part of the Gentoo community in regards to creating official binary repositories despite the fact that Portage already supports installing via binaries and can even create rpms! [but not install form them.] They have bs exscuses that revolve around not being optimized which is a load of crap since you can in theory re emerge the entire system in the background with updated optimizations if you so choose. Then supposedly it will be incredibly difficult to create said repos because of bandwith etc, while true in part Fedora has plenty of online repos so this is hardly insurmountable. What they really have a problem with is the simple fact that being forced to compile for example kde for three hours when one does not need some specific optimization is totally pathetic. It is sad that instead of actually looking at the reality of the situation many Linux users seem to adopt an "it's not Microsoft so it's good." religious outlook with Linux...Yet they complain when ATI gives us crummy drivers and not many big games are ported to Linux...

[Jman]

I do think we need to take negative feedback constructively. It didn't work for them; it should be fixed if possible.

However, the problem is seperating this feedback from trolling and ranting, which really accomplishes nothing. When you make negative jabs at all Fedora developers and call the Fedora project pointless, you need some evidence. And when they make their point it should be respected.

Also, this is a community of enthusiasts. Some of us tend to get defensive when this distro is concerned.

Somehow we need to have the enthusiasts talk to the critics and have a meaningful discussion.

[KiwiNZ]

I agree Jman sometimes the task of seperating is difficult. One technique to beat the Troll is not to to respond in the way they want. Its similar to dealing with child tantrums , ignore them and they stop doing it . Rants are a bit more tricky as quite often in between the emotion is a genuine story that needs to be looked at or listened to. So the best way to respond is to remove emotion from any reply and address the issues professionally and calmly.

Cheers

[Shadow Skill]

I agree with Jman I find that this particular community handles critiscims well this however, does not seem to be a general trend within the entie Linux community sadly. The attitude seems to be either "We the developers know better than you ever will." or we have "j00 4r3 |\|07 1337 H4x0r" which is also wrapped up in an almost pathological obsession with being different from Windows regardless of whether the method used in accomplishing a task is actually efficient or more efficient than the Windows way to do things.

[crackers]

Shadow, people are people. And that gets reflected in everything they do. Heck, I even know a .Net developer who keeps swearing up and down that C# is better than Java. I just pity him... ;)

[Shadow Skill]

Off topic:

Java is a resource hog I really wish that language would go away personally, if I was going to deal with an interpereted language I would rather deal with Python. I watched java kill my resources in windows more than once. Now I don't know about C# but I do know that in general compiled languages are faster than ones that are not compiled like Java in part. Then there is the actual code itself the little that I have seen of it is so so unnessecarily convoluted blah.

On topic:

But yes you are right they are indeed people, its just a shame that this ends up getting in the way of really fixing the problems with Linux and quite frankly ushering in a whole new era of computing.

[imdeemvp]

"Fedora is working for us and thats all we need to know"
No one learns how ride a bike without falling to the ground. Does this means you have a bad bike or just not enough effort was given to learn? I read that particular thread and found it useless information since there is many of us who are able to run the system. It is true we would like to have all the pleasures of windows but unfortunally is not a software issue but the so call vendors dont want to provide linux drives for our hardware.

WE still buy the items and some geeks out there work day and night to create a linux drive and those are the ones that I honestly respect for their support to the linux community. No respect for one single person who rode the bike once and said it was not working!

To the parent of the thread where are your replies we would like to hear more opinions from you. :rolleyes:

[jayemef]

Java is a resource hog I really wish that language would go away personally, if I was going to deal with an interpereted language I would rather deal with Python. I watched java kill my resources in windows more than once. Now I don't know about C# but I do know that in general compiled languages are faster than ones that are not compiled like Java in part. Then there is the actual code itself the little that I have seen of it is so so unnessecarily convoluted blah.
While Java isn't a compiled language in the traditional sense, it is certainly not an interpreted language. As far as effieiency goes, the developers of the lanaguage itself have made leaps and bounds in the last year/year-and-a-half. The GUI libraries are also greatly improved. Every language has its pros and cons, and java is no exception. Rather than be biased toward any one language, you should take each for what it is meant to be used for, and what it is good at. I suggest giving java a second shot. You might be pleasantly surprised.

Going back to the original topic, I too believe it was merely a troll, and nothing really remains to be said. However, it is true that we, as a community, should be able to take constructive criticism, and I'd say that for the most part we do. This is a great place to come to for help, and as long as everyone remains respectful, great things can happen. It is very hard at times though for an advanced user to explain things to a new user. I know I certainly take some of my knowledge for granted, but I always try to explain things as if the listener had very little background knowledge. It's hard though, and I'm sure there are always going to be things that are above someones head. I also get a bit annoyed when people don't read the FAQ or do a search before posting. But everyone is here to learn and help, and as long as that respect remains, we can go a long way.

[Shadow Skill]

Off topic:

Java is a psuedo precompiled language parts of it are in fact interpereted by the virtual machine when a Java application is executed which means that there is more overhead as opposed to a true precompiled language like C same is true for Python which is wholy interpereted in nature.

Sort of on topic: A friend of mine just installed FC3 and from what I can tell everything is behaving for him. :)

[crackers]

Now I don't know about C# but I do know that in general compiled languages are faster than ones that are not compiled like Java in part.
Sorry to hear about your Java experience, but that kind of issue is hard to blame on Java - it's usually the actual Java program that is poorly written, not the language or JVM itself. Heck, I did that a couple of times myself until I learned better!

And you're right, you don't know about C# - it's not "compiled fully" either: both languages are compiled to a "byte-code" intermediary language. C# runs in the CLI, which is another riff on the "virtual machine" concept. The only advantage is that it's highly optimized for it's only platform: Windows. I can write a Java program and dump it directly onto Macs, Linux(es), BSD, Solaris, or Windows (and even some cell phones!) and it'll run almost identically in each environment, given the same version of the JVM (or better). The only reason I say "almost identically" is because I usually don't go out of my way to make a Look-and-Feel. ;)

[Shadow Skill]

hehe I would agree accept its not exactly the app that slows windows to a crawl it stays slow even after the java app is closed soon as I uninstall java itself it behaves again. I did not know C# was psuedo precompiled as well, while this is not nessecarily bad I would hope the virtual machine or equivalent interpeter doesn't constantly suck windows dry of resources when no C# apps are running. I'm personally more interested in c++ and python used together. Seems like a nice compromise especially since it seems like creating GUI's with c++ is a secret. :P But enough of me hijacking this thread!

I'm personally really glad I wandered into this forum and FC itself I definetly learned a great deal from you all, were it not for this community I would have dumped Linux all together long ago, and still be totally enslaved to winblows and its poor security, I am often tempted to just disconnect my computer from the internet when using windows but sadly its not exactly feasable for me to do that even though it would probably cut down on the spyware and occasional trojan. :D