Are you guys nicer than Ubuntu's forum?

[MoonRise]

Re: Are you guys nicer than Ubuntu's forum?

I'm not trying to start anything with what I'm about to say, it's just the truth. That is how I wound up using Kubuntu and moving here; the Ubuntu Forum attitude.

[dibl]

Re: Are you guys nicer than Ubuntu's forum?

Ubuntu forums aren't tough, IMO, although they are rather full of folks who appear to have only discovered their computer in a cabbage yesterday. Debian forum is tough, and sidux forum is pretty much a police state.

[toad]

Re: Are you guys nicer than Ubuntu's forum?

Debian forum is tough, and sidux forum is pretty much a police state.

Well put. The Debian forum has certain well established individuals who really do believe that Debian should not be wasted on the average user while the Sidux lot are totally paranoid (but friendly enough I found).

The two "nicest" forums I have come across: this one and Mepis. They are just so ... cuddly

[Telengard]

Re: Are you guys nicer than Ubuntu's forum?

I am not nice, although I have been accused of being so on a few occasions. I do try to be generally helpful and informative though, sometimes with mediocre results FWIW.

As for the other members of this community I am sometimes amazed by their patience, and willingness to bend over backwards to serve help requesters. We really have a great group of people here with some deep knowledge on a broad range of topics.

[dibl]

Re: Are you guys nicer than Ubuntu's forum?

the Sidux lot are totally paranoid (but friendly enough I found).

That's very true -- actually they'd much rather "talk" on IRC than deal with the forum, which is subject to German law and apparently could be a target of malicious lawsuits if the wrong non-free codecs get mentioned in writing.

Mepis forum is also very friendly. I ran Mepis for awhile but it is a house built on a single developer's head -- there are many Linux distros like that, and I can't feel very secure when my OS is one heartbeat away from unsupported/unsupportable.

[verndog]

Re: Are you guys nicer than Ubuntu's forum?

Ubuntu forums aren't tough, IMO, although they are rather full of folks who appear to have only discovered their computer in a cabbage yesterday. Debian forum is tough, and sidux forum is pretty much a police state.

dibl's comment has to be the quote of the month Thanks dib.

LOL on the cabbage-patch kids comment.

The sidix forum I found much tougher than Debian.

[GreyGeek]

Re: Are you guys nicer than Ubuntu's forum?

The best forums I've encountered, in order, are this one, PCLinuxOS/Mepis (a tie) and Mandriva, although Mandriva's forum software is a pain to use, making it much less "use" friendly.

A BIG problem with the Ubuntu forum is that the volume of postings is so large a particular post can fly to the back pages before many volunteers have a chance to see it and offer help.

The "cabbage patch" people, I'd wager, are folks freshly arrived from Windows, where they were treated like Mushrooms by Microsoft. The economy is going to force a lot more people to move to Linux in order to save license money on Windows, AV products, and "GeekSquad" support cleaning up messes the OS and 3rd party products failed to deliver on, and the tons of nickel & dime costs that require they keep their credit card well lubricated. In the last 6 months the number of personal friends and family who have asked me to install Linux for them has doubled my dependency load ... which ... considering they are running Linux, is hardly any load at all. 8)

Like dibl, I ran Mepis for a while but Woodford's frequent and long absences for health reasons and to support his family after donations failed to do that meant that Mepis was "headless" quite often. It showed. The same problem happened when a Hurricane blew TexStar out of Huston for over a year. I had been running PCLinuxOS from .p93 through PCLinuxOS 2008. The folks in whose hands he left PCLinuxOS weren't up to his technical caliber. The 2009 release was a disaster which prompted him to come back from his "vacation" and fix up a 2009.1 release. But, since PCLinuxOS was staying with KDE 3.5.x and I wanted to try KDE4.x I moved to Mandriva, which featured KDE 4.1. I was happy with Mandriva, for the most part, and Adam Williamson was an asset to the forum of that distro which the upper management of Mandriva did not appropriately appreciate. They let him go "to save money". He had no problem finding employment with RedHat.

KubuntuForum has SEVERAL people of Adam's caliber, or better, and not nearly the traffic that the Ubuntu forum has, which is probably why we have folks posting Ubuntu questions here, along with the occasional Windows user. I think that's great, and I am not concerned about this forum getting flooded the way the Ubuntu forum is because Canonical does not advertise or push Kubuntu/KDE4 the way it pushes Ubuntu/GNOME. But, IMO, the BIGGEST asset of this forum IS its friendliness. When people don't get "RTFM" replies, even when the question has been asked (from the helper's POV) dozens of times, and when those who try to help aren't castigated for giving an answer that is not 100% perfect, it encourages them to continue to learn and to increase their efforts to help others.

I haven't been to the Sidux forum but I have been on forums and newsgroups which were inhabited by folks who carried their cojones around in a wheelbarrow for all to admire and took every opportunity to belittle, berate or otherwise humiliate a poster and use them as a foil to show others their "intellectual" or "technical" superiority, merely to boost their own ego. They are forum killers.

[pookito]

Re: Are you guys nicer than Ubuntu's forum?

It must be OK here, because I don't even have Kubuntu installed and I stil hang out here.

dude, you do not how many times I have tried to use another distribution. I always end up, using Kubuntu and this forum. There is something about the friendliness and the service, this forums make me feel like they really want to help me. I have been in other forums and IRCs that they treat you really awkward, at least that is how they make me feel.

Even in the Kubuntu IRC they do not treat me as good as this forums. That is a good reason why I keep on coming. In turn, I try to give back to the community of this forums. I do not know much, but the little I know, I try to help the people when they ask a question according to my Linux abilities. Even when I have tried to use other distros, I have come here and asked the questions that I needed. I still keep on being treated nice.

Thanks dudes, this is like a circle. The better I get treat it, the more I want to help.

[kjjjjshab]

Re: Are you guys nicer than Ubuntu's forum?

This is truly one of the nicest, most pleasant forums on the web. Non-support related topic discussion/debate can of course get heated, but for any support-type question you simply cannot go to a better place.

This place is a major reason why my distro shopping always seems to end without a "purchase".

[oshunluvr]

Re: Are you guys nicer than Ubuntu's forum?

PCLinuxOS looks good but I want to try Kubuntu now because of these KWin updates they've made, it's very interesting.

If you're getting booted from ubuntu forums, you'll get no love at the PCLinuxOS forums! They are VERY strict and even non-mods will jump on you if you even MENTION a different distro. They also have a lot of rules about HOW and WHERE to post questions and will delete, move, or harshly comment on posts that do not comply.

I deleted my self from their forum after I got flamed for comparing a feature of kubuntu to a feature of pclinuxos - I use both distros. I even got criticized in the "open" discussion section for praising their forum over ubuntu's - because I had the audacity to mention another distro by name!!!

On the upside, unlike ubuntu forums, the users at pclinuxos forums are very helpful and you will get answers to all your questions (correctly posted and asked ones, of course).

Frankly - other than the facist-like and elitist attitude of some of the mods - the PCLinuxOS forum was great because they worked hard to keep it organized. Ubuntu forums are kind of sloppy in comparison and there are a LOT of useless posts. Like "This doesn't work, tell me how to fix it." I suppose a little more policing of the ubuntu forums would help a lot...

[dibl]

Re: Are you guys nicer than Ubuntu's forum?

I suppose a little more policing of the ubuntu forums would help a lot...

True -- however, if you're trying to be attractive to new adopters from Win-World, you can't come off as treating them harshly.

If I were running a Linux forum (which will never happen), I think maybe I'd make a subforum titled "Posts Which Are Solvable With A Single Simple Search". Then I'd be moving a lot of the posts like you see on Ubuntu forums into that one.

[Telengard]

Re: Are you guys nicer than Ubuntu's forum?

"Posts Which Are Solvable With A Single Simple Search"

You have those posts in every Linux forum I frequent. Actually it might be a good idea. When I post a help request, I would rather find it moved into such a subforum than have it ignored completely. IMHO, nothing is more discouraging than being ignored. OTOH, some people deserve to be ignored.

[kjjjjshab]

Re: Are you guys nicer than Ubuntu's forum?

I think a lot the non-searches are because people are just apprehensive about using the command line without someone specifically telling them to do it... it puts someone at ease to know an experienced user told them personally to run a command rather than finding an answer from forum/google searching. Plus the new user knows they will have some help if something goes wrong.

I actually kinda miss Adept because it took away the easiest help there ever was for this distro (sudo dpkg --configure -a). I could type that 20 times a day and not care because I remember the first time someone helped me with it.

[Telengard]

Re: Are you guys nicer than Ubuntu's forum?

--configure package...|-a|--pending
Reconfigure an unpacked package. If -a or --pending is given instead of package, all unpacked but unconfigured packages are configured.

Configuring consists of the following steps:

1. Unpack the configuration files, and at the same time back up the old configuration files, so that they can be restored if something goes wrong.

2. Run postinst script, if provided by the package.

I don't get it. How does the absence of Adept relate to this?

[kjjjjshab]

Re: Are you guys nicer than Ubuntu's forum?

...I don't get it. How does the absence of Adept relate to this?

Adept would always hang or have an error that would require that command... Synaptic seems to never have the same issue. BTW I am referring to the KDE3 version of Adept.