LinuxQuestions – Still Making the World a Better Place After All These Years at Robert Pogson

Years ago, when I was a GNU/Linux newbie, I found LinuxQuestions.org to be the site where I could find out just about anything about GNU/Linux in a rapidly growing on-line community. It’s still going strong so many years later.

When I became knowledgeable I spent many hours in the North helping others solve their problems. I gradually reduced my participation as it became clear that many of the questions were becoming redundant and a good search with Google solved most problems and also that the depth of the problems discussed required a helper to use a particular distro and sometimes a particular release of that distro.

Nevertheless, from time to time I visit again. Yesterday, I helped a fellow who had a post in the “zero replies” category. A package in Slackware was not working for him. It took a bit of to and fro but I downloaded the package from SourceForge and poked around in it to get the man page and the configuration file. It turned out he was missing the configuration file. He fixed that and was back on the air. Of course, the package, swaret, does some of the same things as APT in Debian GNU/Linux so he could have saved himself some trouble by using Debian GNU/Linux but that’s for him to discover…

This is one of millions of examples of the world creating and using its own software to do IT rather than relying on some monopoly or other to solve problems. Hint: no single entity can do everything. We are stronger working together instead of competing against each other and pouring money down the drain in the process. LQ has been and will continue indefinitely to be a force for good. A simple search of Google finds all of the knowledge archived there.

see [SOLVED] Swaret only prints version number.

My Mission

My observations and opinions about IT are based on 40 years of use in science and technology and lately, in education. I like IT that is fast, cost-effective and reliable. I do not care whether my solution is the same as yours. I like to think for myself.

My first use of GNU/Linux in 2001 was so remarkably better than what I had been using, I feel it is important work to share GNU/Linux with the world. I have been blessed by working in schools where students and school systems have benefited by good, modular software easily installed in most systems.

I have shown GNU/Linux to thousands of students and hundreds of teachers over the years and will continue in some way doing that until I die in spite of the opposition.

1 Response to “LinuxQuestions – Still Making the World a Better Place After All These Years”

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1 kozmcrae Nov 20th, 2012 at 11:28 am

I started right off using Google to find answers for my Linux questions. I have rarely come up against a blank wall. There is always a solution with Linux because it hides nothing from you.

One seemingly minor but very important detail is the ability to copy virtually any error or feedback message in Linux. That makes Google searching much easier.