MobileRead Forums - View Single Post

seanos · 03-12-2016, 01:14 AM

I must admit one of my biggest bugbears is the western world’s obsession with binary oppositions and I find the two opposing views of what Linux (perhaps especially Ubuntu) and Linux users should be, rather annoying. Every time I’ve tried to learn things about Python I’ve been put off by the complexity of different versions, the attachment to byte=char and the geek attitude that you can only usefully swallow the knowledge whole. There is no middle ground. It’s all a little like joining a cult.

Once upon a time, Linux was purely the realm of dedicated computer nerds, and that has definitely changed, but reactions to this change seem to be either a) you must learn every technical detail and be absorbed by the collective or b) use a GUI program that assumes you want to know nothing and/or do nothing useful (see Nautilus for a perfect example).

I have done some programming, but I would not call myself a programmer. I still find man pages ugly and tedious to pore over, but what you can do with all those bits and pieces is pretty impressive. So I consider myself to be in that middle ground of users who primarily want to do things other than programming with their OS, but are prepared for a bit of scripting, etc. to get where they want to go.

I don’t consider building from source itself to be particularly difficult. A bit tedious, yes. It’s providing useful, coherent instructions that’s the hard part and I think you did that very well for the most part.

It did occur to me that those packages might involve using pip, but since it continued on from a discussion of Debian packages it wasn’t clear. I also had some bad experiences the last time I used pip.

It’s always great to find helpful Linux users, but clear documentation is still better than time spent searching forums.

03-12-2016, 01:14 AM	#4
seanos Zealot Posts: 104 Karma: 12 Join Date: Apr 2010 Location: Melbourne, Australia Device: Kobo Sage, Kobo Aura H2O, LG V20	I must admit one of my biggest bugbears is the western world’s obsession with binary oppositions and I find the two opposing views of what Linux (perhaps especially Ubuntu) and Linux users should be, rather annoying. Every time I’ve tried to learn things about Python I’ve been put off by the complexity of different versions, the attachment to byte=char and the geek attitude that you can only usefully swallow the knowledge whole. There is no middle ground. It’s all a little like joining a cult. Once upon a time, Linux was purely the realm of dedicated computer nerds, and that has definitely changed, but reactions to this change seem to be either a) you must learn every technical detail and be absorbed by the collective or b) use a GUI program that assumes you want to know nothing and/or do nothing useful (see Nautilus for a perfect example). I have done some programming, but I would not call myself a programmer. I still find man pages ugly and tedious to pore over, but what you can do with all those bits and pieces is pretty impressive. So I consider myself to be in that middle ground of users who primarily want to do things other than programming with their OS, but are prepared for a bit of scripting, etc. to get where they want to go. I don’t consider building from source itself to be particularly difficult. A bit tedious, yes. It’s providing useful, coherent instructions that’s the hard part and I think you did that very well for the most part. It did occur to me that those packages might involve using pip, but since it continued on from a discussion of Debian packages it wasn’t clear. I also had some bad experiences the last time I used pip. It’s always great to find helpful Linux users, but clear documentation is still better than time spent searching forums.