Ubunchu 03 ~ Halp! I’ve been Moefied!

Me to a Tee.

So the third installment of the free manga series dedicated to that great Linux distribution is finally out (Update: get it in all available languages here). And it seems like this time around the author has his arrow aimed at the small category in geekdom that I happen to belong to.

Yes, the category that would sooner spend the next 6 hours Googling and reading and hacking on instinct and trying random dangerous things before they would consider mounting a question in irc or a user forum.

And gods forbid she’s MOE! How despicable! How unspeakable! （´Д｀ ）

Excuse me for a bit but I need to fanboy a little more over ms CLI wielding, Slackware infatuated, forum-ophobic geek-tsundere-chan.

萌えええええええええ〜

Do I sense that I have lost some respect points? :(

Anyway, another fun chapter, though its starting to get to the point where you only fully appreciate it if you have some basic Linux experience. Jokes aside, I can really kind of empathize with Akane’s reluctance to post her predicament on the support forums, even though I (being a relatively recent Linux adopter) never actually got flamed and RTFM’d before. There is this morbid fear of inadvertently asking a stupid question, and it compels me to do whatever I can to solve my own problems as far as possible.

Hmmm, now that I think of it, it might also have something to do with a habit cultivated by the rareness of Desktop Linux where I live (Southeast Asia is pretty much a Windows stronghold). Practically nobody supports Linux here because there are so few of us. And if you dared to raise any kind of technical question at all to your school help desk, your computer manufacturer, your tech support folks, or even your module professor, you almost always get grimaces when they discover that you are one of those ‘errant’ people who run that arcane operating system – Linux. And they are almost guaranteed to have no clue what to do with you and you’ll need to solve your own problems anyway (and occassionally fight their demands for you to switch back to that other OS. Sigh). After awhile I guess you get used to it.

Back on topic, I’ve read somewhere before that in order to get Linux gurus to give you real help, you need to flame Linux until they get mad and indignantly start showing you how wrong you are. The point of this chapter though, and a good point at that, is that those days are fast going – in fact in more popular communities like Ubuntu’s, it’s practically long gone (I know, I’ve seen some stupid questions being asked in the Ubuntu forums that nonetheless get very sweet responses). This doesn’t mean you should go and post unresearched questions and make people cringe though. Just be polite, and always try to include as much information on your problem as you can. If your thread doesn’t elicit responses, that’s actually normal and happens from time to time so don’t take it badly. Bump your thread politely, do some more reading, add more information, or pop a visit to IRC. You’ll eventually get a response.

And for the experienced users, there are still people in many parts of the world that are second / third class citizens due to their choice of operating system. But the beauty of open source is that we support our own, and that includes people as well as software. Let’s make it a point to go out of our way to give a hand to folks who need help with their fledgling steps.

*Snaps awake* Oh dear, how did this turn into such a serious post? Oh well :) A couple more random thoughts to end off ~

Akane in Unix-land since primary school? Holy I can’t imagine how and why but, GAR!

KDE makes a guest appearance! Kubunchu anyone?

Why Intrepid? We’re two releases ahead of 8.10 now. Or is it that the Japanese localised version is a little behind the english release?

I also downloaded the original Japanese version for kicks. Anyone else thinks the translations are a little on the not-so-accurate side, especially what Lisa said in the previous pic? Then again, I barely know my moonspeak, so maybe its just me.