Upgrading to F16 Beta

[Fernando Cassia]

On Mon, Oct 10, 2011 at 07:11, Craig White <craigwhite at azapple.com> wrote:
> The real power of FOSS is about people who recognize a need and they
> fill it rather than waiting around for someone else to do the work.

I don´t have the time (or health for that matter) to devote to any
large-scale software project. I´m just saying what I observe: that
Linux needs more BUILT-IN scripts in distros to solve common problems,
and less "cut and paste this blob of instructions to your shell"
*solution ´recipes´* that could be saved as a script with a helpful,
human-readable name that states its function.

And thanks for the clarification, yes I missed the part about Fedora
having a built-in mechanism that fits the solution the OP asked for.

My point still stands... look around on any Ubuntu or Fedora forum and
you´ll see common questions answered by "here´s how to (usually
involves installing some propietary drivers to get some hardware to
work, or obtain some system info or install some missing component,
restore default configs, etc)... "paste this into your terminal as
root"

But don´t take my word for it:

Proof:

Google search:
("Copy and paste this into a shell" site: fedoraforum)
http://ho.io/p9jv

5,890 results

("Copy and paste this" site: UbuntuForums.org)
http://ho.io/p9jw

29,800 results

"copy and paste this" linux terminal site:blogspot.com
http://ho.io/p9jx

191,000 results

>From the trivial "how to identify your sound card" to "how to install
the speedtouch adsl modem" passing thru "how to reset and respawn
gnome panels"... all tutorials involve opening a shell and cutting and
pasting a blob of commands, -even if only one or two but with a given
set of switches and parameters to achieve a certain function).

The techie would like to understand what is going on, so that´s good
for him to see the certain incantation of a single comand or series of
commands... The end user on the other hand just wants a "solution". So
why not provide a solution in the form of a script?.

That´s my observation. Too many "cut and paste this" responses. Too
few scripts included with distros.

To take one example, I found a user asking on how to reset gnome panels.

The answer:
---
"Code:

gconftool --recursive-unset  /apps/panel
killall gnome-panel

"your panels should then reset , and respawn. Should fix most issues."
---

Then bloody hell why isn´t this coded as "gnome-panels-reset.sh" and
placed in the path?. Then next time someone asks about this the answer
could be a simple "run gnome-panels-reset"

Am I to blame for not doing the "scripts repository" or Fedora project
myself? Are you shooting the messenger? I´m just giving you an
observation, now do whatever you want with it, ignore it, or do
something about it if you believe my reasoning has merit.

Or perhaps there is already an official "Fedora-help-scripts"  effort
going on. Is there? In that case my apologies in advance. If not,
then, well, I see this as an opportunity.

OK, here´s now a place to discuss this...

https://sourceforge.net/p/linhelpscripts/
https://lists.sourceforge.net/mailman/admin/linhelpscripts-discuss

I should begin by inviting this guy. http://www.pixelbeat.org/scripts/

;)
FC