Hi,
I'm at a chat in Debcamp about the experience for new Linux users and
people new to Debian. It can be intimidating to use Debian and also
to front up and ask questions.
To make it REALLY clear - anybody and everybody is welcome here: if
they need us to answer questions that should be fine.
Hi,
I'm at a chat in Debcamp about the experience for new Linux users and
people new to Debian. It can be intimidating to use Debian and also
to front up and ask questions.
To make it REALLY clear - anybody and everybody is welcome here: if
they need us to answer questions that should be fine.
All the very best, as ever,
Andy Cater
amacater@debian.org
"Andrew M.A. Cater" <amacater@einval.com> wrote:
Hi,
I'm at a chat in Debcamp about the experience for new Linux users and people new to Debian. It can be intimidating to use Debian and also
to front up and ask questions.
To make it REALLY clear - anybody and everybody is welcome here: if
they need us to answer questions that should be fine.
I didn't know of debcamp, but I found https://debconf25.debconf.org/
and noted that it says:
"Registration has closed. Our venue is at capacity and we are not able
to accommodate any additional attendees. We will not be able to
register any attendees on-site, sorry."
So are random drop-ins welcome or not?
All the very best, as ever,
Andy Cater
amacater@debian.org
To make it REALLY clear - anybody and everybody is welcome here: if they
need us to answer questions that should be fine.
I know a large number of people under the age of 20 who literally say
things like, "email is only for password reminders and my Steam login
code". It's not that they are non-technical or uninterested in
technology, it's that specifically email is an unknown and unwieldy tool
for them. When email is the only support venue, to a lot of folks that
is unwelcoming.
I say this as someone who has had an email address since 1992 and has
been using this particular email address since 1998.
Hi,
On Thu, Jul 10, 2025 at 08:48:18AM +0000, Andrew M.A. Cater wrote:
To make it REALLY clear - anybody and everybody is welcome here: if they need us to answer questions that should be fine.
I think it's worth considering the fact that new computer users are increasingly less likely to use email and are more likely to find email intimidating.
I know a large number of people under the age of 20 who literally say
things like, "email is only for password reminders and my Steam login
code". It's not that they are non-technical or uninterested in
technology, it's that specifically email is an unknown and unwieldy tool
for them. When email is the only support venue, to a lot of folks that
is unwelcoming.
We should try to be as welcoming as we can here, but I think that Debian cannot hope to reverse that trend so if it wishes to remain relevant it should try to remove email workflows from all aspects of its use.
I know a large number of people under the age of 20 who literally say
things like, "email is only for password reminders and my Steam login
code". It's not that they are non-technical or uninterested in
technology, it's that specifically email is an unknown and unwieldy
tool for them. When email is the only support venue, to a lot of
folks that is unwelcoming.
The likes of facebook are steering people away from email as they want
to keep all interaction within their eco system - email is something
that lets people escape from them.
Hi,
On Thu, Jul 10, 2025 at 08:48:18AM +0000, Andrew M.A. Cater wrote:
To make it REALLY clear - anybody and everybody is welcome here: if
they need us to answer questions that should be fine.
I think it's worth considering the fact that new computer users are increasingly less likely to use email and are more likely to find
email intimidating.
What "trend"? That kids don't use (or perhaps understand) stuff they've
had no real *need* of yet?
Should we get rid of spares and the tools from car trunks because "kids" haven't yet learned why the stuff is important?
Hi,
On Thu, Jul 10, 2025 at 02:32:53PM +0100, Alain D D Williams wrote:
The likes of facebook are steering people away from email as they want
to keep all interaction within their eco system - email is something
that lets people escape from them.
I would dispute your claim that email is the only form of social
networking that has positive value.
And are new computer users not pretty much compelled to set up a
Microsoft email address? It's getting more difficult to avoid.
Certainly a mobile phone user will be required to have an email address.
I don't think email is going away
I'm telling you how things are
On Thu, Jul 10, 2025 at 03:19:40PM +0000, Andy Smith wrote:
On Thu, Jul 10, 2025 at 02:32:53PM +0100, Alain D D Williams wrote:
The likes of facebook are steering people away from email as they want
to keep all interaction within their eco system - email is something
that lets people escape from them.
I would dispute your claim that email is the only form of social
networking that has positive value.
That is not what I say. I say that facebook, etc, want to stop people interacting outside of their visibility/control - email is one way of so doing - but not the only one.
On 10/7/25 23:10, Andy Smith wrote:
I'm telling you how things are
Those are the words that are problematic - "I am the absolute authority and the absolute expert regarding what is happening..."
Hi,
On Thu, Jul 10, 2025 at 04:00:09PM +0100, Joe wrote:
And are new computer users not pretty much compelled to set up a
Microsoft email address? It's getting more difficult to avoid.
Certainly a mobile phone user will be required to have an email
address.
I think today's computer users regard these as transactional and just
a nuisance, not something to actually use for fun, hobbies, or even
work if possible.
I don't think email is going away
I invite you to take any email-based community you are a part of and
count up its messages per year for the last 10 years.
I can think of only one example that possibly, just possibly may have
grown in volume of messages, and that would be the Linux kernel
mailing list. And I'm not even sure there. That one is a bit of an
outlier since they have so many tools based around email workflows,
that there are vast numbers of messages that are read only by other
bits of software not directly by any human.
Long term I don't think LKML will stick with this, I don't think LKML
will inspire others to reverse the trend, and Debian absolutely 100%
will not manage that either.
Hello,
On Thu, Jul 10, 2025 at 11:50:41PM +0800, Bret Busby wrote:
On 10/7/25 23:10, Andy Smith wrote:
I'm telling you how things are
Those are the words that are problematic - "I am the absolute authority and >> the absolute expert regarding what is happening..."
Things that are facts:
- Levels of email collaboration are down almost everywhere, as an
ongoing trend, in Debian and generally in the world
- Average age of email-based communities is growing faster than the
average age of the general population in Debian and generally in the
world
- Nothing Debian does will reverse those trends
Things that aren't facts:
- Young people don't know what is important in life
Some things I am just not up for debate on, and so yeah if you want to
debate whether any of the above is a (non-)fact (as opposed to why
they're facts or how we can respond to them) you are welcome to do that without me.
Thanks!
Andy
We're talking in this thread about people potentially interested in
Debian, as opposed to Windows or other Linux distros. I'm suggesting
that all these people will be comfortable with email, mailing lists
We're talking in this thread about people potentially interested in
Debian, as opposed to Windows or other Linux distros. I'm
suggesting that all these people will be comfortable with email,
mailing lists
Comfortable with email: possibly (tho maybe they don't like using it).
But IME most users today are *not* comfortable with mailing-lists (I'd
even say most of them don't know what it is).
OK, but take it further: these people who are not using email, are
they actually likely to use a real computer for anything at all other
than playing games? Their communication will be carried out using the
mobile phone permanently glued to their hand, and they will not give a
damn what operating system their computer or console uses, as long as
it plays the right games.
Someone who uses a real computer, who exchanges files from office applications or 3D CAD, for example, will send them to friends or
colleagues by email, as transferring to mobile phone to send them using WhatsApp is extremely cumbersome.
We're talking in this thread about people potentially interested in
Debian, as opposed to Windows or other Linux distros. I'm suggesting
that all these people will be comfortable with email, mailing lists and
other computer-based communications. If they're not, they are unlikely
to have even heard of Linux and would have no possible use for it.
I don't think removing email workflows (which implies removing mailing
lists) is wise.
Debian can support new ways to participate, like Social Media and
Chat, for Gen-Z. However, I don't believe it is an either/or
proposition. Debian should support email, mailing lists and other
methods for everyone.
Hi,
On Thu, Jul 10, 2025 at 09:44:05AM -0400, Dan Purgert wrote:
What "trend"? That kids don't use (or perhaps understand) stuff they've had no real *need* of yet?
The trend that people increasingly do not use email as a means of collaboration. I'm sorry if that is unwelcome to you, but it's how
things are and Debian is not going to reverse it.
Should we get rid of spares and the tools from car trunks because "kids" haven't yet learned why the stuff is important?
This an example of a dismissive tone that isn't welcoming.
I don't think removing email workflows (which implies removing mailing
lists) is wise.
Debian can support new ways to participate, like Social Media and
Chat, for Gen-Z. However, I don't believe it is an either/or
proposition. Debian should support email, mailing lists and other
methods for everyone.
If Debian switches to Social Media and Chat, then folks like me -- who
do not participate in the social networking experiments -- will lose
out.
On Thu, Jul 10, 2025 at 19:34:58 +0000, Andy Smith wrote:
once alternatives are provided and
decently supported, people actively choose not to use email.
*Some* people may choose that.
The rest of us will stay here.
once alternatives are provided and
decently supported, people actively choose not to use email.
On Thu, Jul 10, 2025 at 3:10 PM Dan Ritter <dsr@randomstring.org> wrote:
Jeffrey Walton wrote:
I don't think removing email workflows (which implies removing mailing lists) is wise.
Debian can support new ways to participate, like Social Media and
Chat, for Gen-Z. However, I don't believe it is an either/or
proposition. Debian should support email, mailing lists and other
methods for everyone.
The D language folks have a great system at
https://forum.dlang.org
The web interface is exactly the same as the mailing lists,
which are exactly the same as the newsgroups, which also
produces an ATOM/RSS feed and an IRC bot. Any access reads and,
if possible, posts to the same streams of messages.
And, yes, it's open source - AGPL 3.0.
It does depend on having a working NNTP server behind the
scenes, but the good news there is that the one they test
against is INN, which is packaged in Debian.
At the risk of sounding argumentative... I would not say "exactly the
same [web interface vs mailing list]". See "Why use mailing lists?" at <https://mailarchive.ietf.org/arch/msg/ietf/q6A_anL1u-Y9iXe-vboiOYamsl0/>.
On Thu, Jul 10, 2025 at 19:34:58 +0000, Andy Smith wrote:
once alternatives are provided and
decently supported, people actively choose not to use email.
*Some* people may choose that.
The rest of us will stay here.
Hi,
On Thu, Jul 10, 2025 at 02:59:33PM -0400, Jeffrey Walton wrote:
I don't think removing email workflows (which implies removing mailing lists) is wise.
Debian can support new ways to participate, like Social Media and
Chat, for Gen-Z. However, I don't believe it is an either/or
proposition. Debian should support email, mailing lists and other
methods for everyone.
I believe it's either/or only because once alternatives are provided and decently supported, people actively choose not to use email. And if the alternatives aren't provided then people ultimately choose to use
something that doesn't require them to use email.
On Thu, Jul 10, 2025 at 19:34:58 +0000, Andy Smith wrote:
once alternatives are provided
and decently supported, people actively choose not to use email.*Some* people may choose that.
The rest of us will stay here.
On 11 Jul 2025, at 09:58, Anssi Saari <anssi.saari@debian-user.mail.kapsi.fi> wrote:
Andy Smith <andy@strugglers.net> writes:
I think it's worth considering the fact that new computer users are
increasingly less likely to use email and are more likely to find email
intimidating.
Do you have a proposal then for a forum (as in, a platform for group discussion) that's more palatable to the youngsters?
I think it's worth considering the fact that new computer users are increasingly less likely to use email and are more likely to find email intimidating.
[...]
Granted, I’m an old fuddy-duddy who’s been using Linux since day 1
(and UNIX before then), but email is the *perfect* medium for this
type of interaction.
I know a large number of people under the age of 20 who literally say
things like, "email is only for password reminders and my Steam login
code". It's not that they are non-technical or uninterested in
technology, it's that specifically email is an unknown and unwieldy tool
for them. When email is the only support venue, to a lot of folks that
is unwelcoming.
email is an unknown and unwieldy tool
for them.
Am 10.07.25 um 15:14 schrieb Andy Smith:
I know a large number of people under the age of 20 who literally
say things like, "email is only for password reminders and my Steam
login code". It's not that they are non-technical or uninterested in technology, it's that specifically email is an unknown and unwieldy
tool for them. When email is the only support venue, to a lot of
folks that is unwelcoming.
Email is for sending you Files/notes if you dont have a cloud.
email is an unknown and unwieldy tool
for them.
100% True
On 11 Jul 2025, at 09:58, Anssi Saari <anssi.saari@debian-user.mail.kapsi.fi> wrote:
Andy Smith <andy@strugglers.net> writes:
I think it's worth considering the fact that new computer users are
increasingly less likely to use email and are more likely to find email
intimidating.
Do you have a proposal then for a forum (as in, a platform for group
discussion) that's more palatable to the youngsters?
TikTok, with all the information they need in useful 4 second bites :-)
Seriously, though, we’re all been frustrated by the changes happening to the web in general - it used to be you’d search for information
and get lots of links to actual written documentation, but now you get a blend of AI generated nonsense or a ‘YouTube personality’
(whose channel seems to be just running through the installer of different distros).
What a mailing list like this produces is a searchable archive of knowledge. I mean, look:
https://lists.debian.org/search.html
Imagine that! All the knowledge that gets shared here is searchable on a web page :)
Granted, I’m an old fuddy-duddy who’s been using Linux since day 1 (and UNIX before then), but email is the *perfect* medium for this
type of interaction.
John Dow <johnmdow@me.com> writes:
On 11 Jul 2025, at 09:58, Anssi Saari <anssi.saari@debian-user.mail.kapsi.fi> wrote:
Andy Smith <andy@strugglers.net> writes:
I think it's worth considering the fact that new computer users are
increasingly less likely to use email and are more likely to find email
intimidating.
Do you have a proposal then for a forum (as in, a platform for group
discussion) that's more palatable to the youngsters?
TikTok, with all the information they need in useful 4 second bites :-)
Seriously, though, we’re all been frustrated by the changes happening to the web in general - it used to be you’d search for information
and get lots of links to actual written documentation, but now you get a blend of AI generated nonsense or a ‘YouTube personality’
(whose channel seems to be just running through the installer of different distros).
What a mailing list like this produces is a searchable archive of knowledge. I mean, look:
https://lists.debian.org/search.html
Imagine that! All the knowledge that gets shared here is searchable on a web page :)
Granted, I’m an old fuddy-duddy who’s been using Linux since day 1 (and UNIX before then), but email is the *perfect* medium for this
type of interaction.
I'm am also an old fuddy-duddy and involved from the fringes in a
project to allow the automation of building mainly scientific software
for HPC clusters. Most the other people associated with the project
will probably not be really young, with around 40% sys admins and 30% in
IT support.
The main communication used to be via a mailing list. However, a Slack channel was introduced 7 years ago and now, according the latest yearly survey in which usually around 100 people participate, only around 14%
of the people involved are subscribed to the mailing list.
[...]
So I don't think the issue is just "youngsters", who are in my
experience form fairly heterogenous group anyway, but more of a failure
of understanding what exactly a mailing list is and what its advantages
are. This problem may be exacerbated by the fact that there is not "an
app" to use mailing lists, which may prevent people from engaging with
the concept.
won't be as keen on handing them your data [..] how do
you think they make their money?
Whereas those of us who use email see it as exactly the other way
around, email is a simple protocol that isn't controlled by one private company, web-based services are dependent on one company and can be
changed or withdrawn at will, particularly if free. If you don't like
how your email and/or domain host does business, you can pick another
without changing how you work.
Twice this year I have had to join a Discord to get support for an
open source piece of software. Can we do better than Discord or are we
going to ignore everything that's not email until we all have to be on Discord?
(Do not confuse "Discord" with "Discourse". I really like Discourse,
and that one is open source. Ubuntu user may be familiar with it.)
The D language folks have a great system at
https://forum.dlang.org
The web interface is exactly the same as the mailing lists,
which are exactly the same as the newsgroups, which also
produces an ATOM/RSS feed and an IRC bot. Any access reads and,
if possible, posts to the same streams of messages.
John Dow <johnmdow@me.com> writes:
On 11 Jul 2025, at 09:58, Anssi Saari <anssi.saari@debian-user.mail.kapsi.fi> wrote:
Andy Smith <andy@strugglers.net> writes:
I think it's worth considering the fact that new computer users are
increasingly less likely to use email and are more likely to find email
intimidating.
Do you have a proposal then for a forum (as in, a platform for group
discussion) that's more palatable to the youngsters?
TikTok, with all the information they need in useful 4 second bites :-)
Seriously, though, we’re all been frustrated by the changes happening to the web in general - it used to be you’d search for information
and get lots of links to actual written documentation, but now you get a blend of AI generated nonsense or a ‘YouTube personality’
(whose channel seems to be just running through the installer of different distros).
What a mailing list like this produces is a searchable archive of knowledge. I mean, look:
https://lists.debian.org/search.html
Imagine that! All the knowledge that gets shared here is searchable on a web page :)
Granted, I’m an old fuddy-duddy who’s been using Linux since day 1 (and UNIX before then), but email is the *perfect* medium for this
type of interaction.
I'm am also an old fuddy-duddy and involved from the fringes in a
project to allow the automation of building mainly scientific software
for HPC clusters. Most the other people associated with the project
will probably not be really young, with around 40% sys admins and 30% in
IT support.
The main communication used to be via a mailing list. However, a Slack channel was introduced 7 years ago and now, according the latest yearly survey in which usually around 100 people participate, only around 14%
of the people involved are subscribed to the mailing list.
The core developers seem very keen on Slack and as they are doing a
great job providing software which has probably saved me many hundreds
of hours of fairly mind-numbing work, so I am not one to criticize their choice of tool.
However, for people like me, who only contribute infrequently and often
just have questions, the move to Slack seems very unfortunate, since the posts there get deleted after 90 days. That seem to me a huge step
backwards when compared to a mailing list, which, as John says, can form
a repository of knowledge going back decades. Despite this, to me,
glaringly massive disadvantage, there are obviously many people who
probably use email on a day-to-day basis but still prefer Slack to the mailing list.
So I don't think the issue is just "youngsters", who are in my
experience form fairly heterogenous group anyway, but more of a failure
of understanding what exactly a mailing list is and what its advantages
are. This problem may be exacerbated by the fact that there is not "an
app" to use mailing lists, which may prevent people from engaging with
the concept.
Cheers,
Loris
--
This signature is currently under constuction.
In short I think any attempt to provide a new place for users is going to^^^^^^^^^
take a serious investment of time to make sure the place is not disregarded for being a ghost town.
(and the sites I am aware of using Mailman 2 are reluctant to move to 3. Debian does not use Mailman.)
On 2025-07-11, Joe <joe@jretrading.com> wrote:
On Fri, 11 Jul 2025 12:13:05 +0200
Philipp Ewald <philipp.ewald@digionline.de> wrote:
Am 10.07.25 um 15:14 schrieb Andy Smith:
I know a large number of people under the age of 20 who literally
say things like, "email is only for password reminders and my Steam
login code". It's not that they are non-technical or uninterested in
technology, it's that specifically email is an unknown and unwieldy
tool for them. When email is the only support venue, to a lot of
folks that is unwelcoming.
Email is for sending you Files/notes if you dont have a cloud.
email is an unknown and unwieldy tool
for them.
100% True
Whereas those of us who use email see it as exactly the other way
around, email is a simple protocol that isn't controlled by one private
I use a mail to news gateway (gmane) that I find more convenient than
email (to tell the truth, I don't even know how people handle the shitload
of emails flooding into their inboxes).
On 2025-07-11, Dan Purgert <dan@djph.net> wrote:
I use a mail to news gateway (gmane) that I find more convenient than
email (to tell the truth, I don't even know how people handle the shitload >> of emails flooding into their inboxes).
A sieve rule to stuff all you lot into "INBOX.Debian-User" :)
And then you eventually delete the accumulated dross?
Andy Smith <andy@strugglers.net> writes:
I think it's worth considering the fact that new computer users are increasingly less likely to use email and are more likely to find email intimidating.
Do you have a proposal then for a forum (as in, a platform for group discussion) that's more palatable to the youngsters?
I don't even know how people handle the shitload of emails flooding
into their inboxes
On Thu Jul 10, 2025 at 8:10 PM BST, Dan Ritter wrote:
The web interface is exactly the same as the mailing lists, which
are exactly the same as the newsgroups, which also produces an
ATOM/RSS feed and an IRC bot. Any access reads and, if possible,
posts to the same streams of messages.
I think something like this -- which presents/repurposes an existing community -- is likely the best way forward. I think GNU Mailman 3
in theory can do something similar, but I haven't seen many instances
of that (and the sites I am aware of using Mailman 2 are reluctant to
move to 3. Debian does not use Mailman.)
Do you have a proposal then for a forum (as in, a platform for group
discussion) that's more palatable to the youngsters?
Hi,
I'm at a chat in Debcamp about the experience for new Linux users and people new to Debian. It can be intimidating to use Debian and also to front up
and ask questions.
To make it REALLY clear - anybody and everybody is welcome here: if they
need us to answer questions that should be fine.
All the very best, as ever,
Andy Cater
amacater@debian.org
Do you have a proposal then for a forum (as in, a platform for group
discussion) that's more palatable to the youngsters?
Zulip?
Discourse?
Lemmy?
Ideally, such a thing would have good&nice bridges to&from email, but in practice I don't know any that have such bridges (some have no such
bridge, while other have such bridges but they don't qualify as
"good&nice").
Jonathan Dowland (HE12025-07-11):
In short I think any attempt to provide a new place for users is going to^^^^^^^^^
take a serious investment of time to make sure the place is not disregarded for being a ghost town.
I think this “for users†is the key point.
Libre Software is so good because we make it for ourselves, be build the
tool we want to use, with the features we know will make our lives
easier and our work more efficient.
But in this discussion, it is about people setting up tools they would
not use for themselves in order to attract hypothetical users.
It is bound to fail, and it denotes quite a bit of condescension. That
the condescension is mostly warranted does not make it ok.
Regards,
--
Nicolas George
I don't anything about Discourse's email bridging, if any --
my possibly naive take is that email users are distinctly second
class,
On 12 Jul 2025, at 06:15, Paul Scott <waterhorsemusic@aol.com> wrote:

On 7/11/25 11:04 AM, John Hasler wrote:
I don't even know how people handle the shitload of emails floodingBy using Gnus. It handles mail like news.
into their inboxes
What package is it in?
Thank you,
Zulip?
Discourse?
Lemmy?
Ideally, such a thing would have good&nice bridges to&from email, but in practice I don't know any that have such bridges (some have no such
bridge, while other have such bridges but they don't qualify as
"good&nice").
What package is [Gnus] in?
That's fine as long as you realize you are in the vast minority.
The thrust of the OP seems to be directed towards the *majority* of
*new* users, who ain't gonna be using Gnus to read this mailing list,
please get real.
On 2025-07-10, fxkl47BF@protonmail.com <fxkl47BF@protonmail.com> wrote:
On Thu, 10 Jul 2025, Greg Wooledge wrote:
On Thu, Jul 10, 2025 at 19:34:58 +0000, Andy Smith wrote:
once alternatives are provided and
decently supported, people actively choose not to use email.
*Some* people may choose that.
The rest of us will stay here.
agreed
there are those of us who do not have phones that run "apps"
and do not participate in so called social media of any kind
That's fine as long as you realize you are in the vast minority.
The thrust of the OP seems to be directed towards the *majority* of
*new* users, who ain't gonna be using Gnus to read this mailing list,
please get real.
You people are talking to yourselves. That's the problem which the OP
is seeking to solve.
My understanding was that everyone here would be welcome to a more
commodious place for the newer generations for whom mailing lists and >newsgroups are foreign modes of communication.
On Sat, Jul 12, 2025 at 03:53:08PM -0000, Greg wrote:
My understanding was that everyone here would be welcome to a more
commodious place for the newer generations for whom mailing lists and
newsgroups are foreign modes of communication.
And if the people here are more comfortable on mailing lists and
consider web forums to be foreign modes of communication? This whole conversation is pointless because either people will start using
something else or they won't; posting on the mailing list that everybody should be using something else that other people like better seems unproductive at best.
On Sat, Jul 12, 2025 at 12:20:05PM -0400, Michael Stone wrote:
On Sat, Jul 12, 2025 at 04:09:25PM +0000, fxkl47BF@protonmail.com wrote:
but doesn't it all come down to the whims of the debian gods
after all it is their's
not really--anyone can start a forum, they just have to figure out how to
convince people to use it
Our posts crossed: same thought, different words :-)
On Sat, Jul 12, 2025 at 04:09:25PM +0000, fxkl47BF@protonmail.com wrote:
but doesn't it all come down to the whims of the debian gods
after all it is their's
not really--anyone can start a forum, they just have to figure out how to convince people to use it
but doesn't it all come down to the whims of the debian gods
after all it is their's
My understanding was that everyone here would be welcome to a more
commodious place for the newer generations for whom mailing lists and newsgroups are foreign modes of communication.
On 2025-07-11, The Wanderer <wanderer@fastmail.fm> wrote:
I am not aware of any potential solution for this that has seemed to me
as if it would actually be viable.
If I'm missing any that would, or if I'm wrong and some of the ones I've
dismissed as non-viable actually would be viable, I would be *actively
glad* about that.
Where we are is I asked my own wife if she'd ever heard of Debian. She
said "Quoi?" three or four times before admitting she hadn't. She *has*
heard of Linux, though. Before talking about quoting styles you have to realize most people are unaccustomed to seeking answers to their
computer problems on the Internet at all. My wife asks *me* if she has problem she can't resolve. One time she went to a Youtube page for a
video that her friend, who teaches the American equivalent of first
grade, wanted to show to her class. Of course, she downloaded the web
page and not the video. I downloaded the latter with yt-dlp. When I told
her, "Don't you understand that..." she responded "I'm not interested in
this kind of thing like you are."
It's all pretty hopeless, IMHO. But I've learned a lot here just by
reading the posts of the old dinosaurs. So I thank you all for that.
What will happen when you finally become extinct is anybody's guess.
That's fine as long as you realize you are in the vast minority.
The thrust of the OP seems to be directed towards the *majority* of
*new* users, who ain't gonna be using Gnus to read this mailing list,
please get real.
Greg (HE12025-07-12):
The thrust of the OP seems to be directed towards the *majority* of
*new* users, who ain't gonna be using Gnus to read this mailing list, please get real.
So, you would have a webforum with new users asking questions and
experienced users who could give answers still on the mailing-list.
Is it a underhanded plan to have the experienced users quietly by
themselves?
On 2025-07-14, Nicolas George <george@nsup.org> wrote:
Greg (HE12025-07-12):
That's fine as long as you realize you are in the vast minority.
As long as you acknowledge that not being in the majority is not a flaw
in any way…
I do completely acknowledge that.
The thrust of the OP seems to be directed towards the *majority* of
*new* users, who ain't gonna be using Gnus to read this mailing list,
please get real.
So, you would have a webforum with new users asking questions and experienced users who could give answers still on the mailing-list.
There is such a thing as an irresolvable problem. I think new users
likely to be using desktop environments, whereas the old dinosaurs hold
them in a certain disdain. It is also possible a new user might not know
how to use or navigate a mailing list.
Anyway, everything's simple as pie once you know how to do it. Getting
from here to there is left as an exercise many people don't have the
time or the inclination to take. Some people simply aren't interested in
the topic of computers in the same way they're not interested in the mechanics of internal-combustion engines. They buy the car and when it's broken they go to Joe's Automotive in Culver City.
Is it a underhanded plan to have the experienced users quietly by themselves?
I think that's already happened, more or less. The issue is that to get
my wife to use Debian it would need to be preinstalled [...]
Only reason my wife's not on linux (anymore) is because the new
paper-cutter thing (by cricut) needs windows-only drivers and I'm not
allowed to take it apart and start probing around.
... but also their whole website is bogus and with my luck would ALSO
do some user-agent checks now. Ugh, why is everything a web-app :(
Is it a underhanded plan to have the experienced users quietly by
themselves?
the old dinosaurs hold them in a certain disdain
On 2025-07-14, Dan Purgert <dan@djph.net> wrote:
I think that's already happened, more or less. The issue is that to get
my wife to use Debian it would need to be preinstalled [...]
But that's why she has you, right? :)
Right, but her laptop is pretty much dead (won't charge any longer and
has only 4 gb of RAM) and cannot be revived for any sensible amount of
money, so she must buy a new one.
On 14 Jul 2025, at 16:52, Greg <curtyshoo@gmail.com> wrote:
On 2025-07-14, Michael Stone <mstone@debian.org> wrote:
On Mon, Jul 14, 2025 at 01:18:03PM -0000, Greg wrote:
the old dinosaurs hold them in a certain disdain
You don't understand irony, do you?
Sure. All the old hands (Hasler, Wright, tomas, Wooledge et. al.) are
using Gnome, the default Debian desktop.
Sure. All the old hands (Hasler, Wright, tomas, Wooledge et. al.) are
using Gnome, the default Debian desktop.
Right, but her laptop is pretty much dead (won't charge any longer and
has only 4 gb of RAM) and cannot be revived for any sensible amount of
money, so she must buy a new one.
On Mon, 14 Jul 2025 09:45:56 -0400
Dan Purgert <dan@djph.net> wrote:
Only reason my wife's not on linux (anymore) is because the new paper-cutter thing (by cricut) needs windows-only drivers and I'm not allowed to take it apart and start probing around.
It probably actually runs on something somewhere on the spectrum
between original HPGL and current PDF. There are a few DIY efforts out
there, but the obvious intention is a walled garden.
... but also their whole website is bogus and with my luck would ALSO
do some user-agent checks now. Ugh, why is everything a web-app :(
Because it's platform-independent, as long as you don't do stupid one-browser-only tricks. My assorted home software will run on her
Windows computer, my Debian sid and both Android and iOS mobile phones.
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