Civility in tech discussions - or is Blankety Blank Distro dead in the modern era?
by decuser from LinuxQuestions.org on (#5C9WP)
Hi all,
I'm a longtime lurker on LQ. Apparently, the last time I actually posted anything, before today, was back in September of 2003. At that time, I was posting a question about multimedia configuration in Slackware 9.1. I'd been using Redhat since 5.2, but I began using Slackware in the 0.9 kernel days. I remember downloading the slackware floppies via 300 baud modem and a remote VMS system connected to the internet (maybe 1992-1993). But enough reminiscence, I just wanted y'all to have a sense of my background before I plowed into the current discussion. In recent days, I find myself using an MX 19.2 (patito feo) base respin by the MX team's m_pav : https://mxlinux.org/uncategorized/mx...rsonal-respin/ and FreeBSD 12.2 with all of its ZFS glory.
Today, as I was browsing on the first of January, in 2021, I thought back to the heady days of using Slackware for the first time and thought to myself, I wonder if Slackware is still around. I did a quick Google search of - is slackware dead in 2020 (nm, that it's 2021, I haven't quite adjusted yet)? and lo and behold, first hit was an LQ posting with that exact question. I read through the dozens of answers, some by highly respected LQ members (high reputation, posts in the the thousands, etc), and was amazed at the diversity of those answers.
What struck me immediately, was how incredibly intolerant the responders were. The OP asked a simple, if seemingly naive, question. Apparently, the OP was thrown off by the fact that the Slackware homepage hadn't been updated since 2016. In various ways, these titans of LQ let the OP know that this was not just naive, but reputation killing, an epic introduction, probably trolling, and the thread should probably be locked and the OP thrown in a dungeon.
I would like to say that I found the OP's question, relevant and interesting, even and perhaps more so, a year later. It's not that I seriously wonder if Slackware is dead, there are plenty of folks out there still using Yellow Dog. But I was curious as to why there hadn't been an update to the front page of the distro in nearly 6 years. Undoubtedly, it is still being maintained/developed - as of Jan 1, 2021, the last commit appears to have been the evening before Dec 31, 2020. But to newbs, is it really that obvious that this means it's still alive?
The thread was closed in July because of a number of personal attacks. Sad. What is your thinking on the matter of civility and dumb (seeming) questions - should a community censure these newbs or the powerful responders who took aim at them? Or, put another way, how can a community remain peaceful with so many levels of understanding and backgrounds.
Thanks,
Will
I'm a longtime lurker on LQ. Apparently, the last time I actually posted anything, before today, was back in September of 2003. At that time, I was posting a question about multimedia configuration in Slackware 9.1. I'd been using Redhat since 5.2, but I began using Slackware in the 0.9 kernel days. I remember downloading the slackware floppies via 300 baud modem and a remote VMS system connected to the internet (maybe 1992-1993). But enough reminiscence, I just wanted y'all to have a sense of my background before I plowed into the current discussion. In recent days, I find myself using an MX 19.2 (patito feo) base respin by the MX team's m_pav : https://mxlinux.org/uncategorized/mx...rsonal-respin/ and FreeBSD 12.2 with all of its ZFS glory.
Today, as I was browsing on the first of January, in 2021, I thought back to the heady days of using Slackware for the first time and thought to myself, I wonder if Slackware is still around. I did a quick Google search of - is slackware dead in 2020 (nm, that it's 2021, I haven't quite adjusted yet)? and lo and behold, first hit was an LQ posting with that exact question. I read through the dozens of answers, some by highly respected LQ members (high reputation, posts in the the thousands, etc), and was amazed at the diversity of those answers.
What struck me immediately, was how incredibly intolerant the responders were. The OP asked a simple, if seemingly naive, question. Apparently, the OP was thrown off by the fact that the Slackware homepage hadn't been updated since 2016. In various ways, these titans of LQ let the OP know that this was not just naive, but reputation killing, an epic introduction, probably trolling, and the thread should probably be locked and the OP thrown in a dungeon.
I would like to say that I found the OP's question, relevant and interesting, even and perhaps more so, a year later. It's not that I seriously wonder if Slackware is dead, there are plenty of folks out there still using Yellow Dog. But I was curious as to why there hadn't been an update to the front page of the distro in nearly 6 years. Undoubtedly, it is still being maintained/developed - as of Jan 1, 2021, the last commit appears to have been the evening before Dec 31, 2020. But to newbs, is it really that obvious that this means it's still alive?
The thread was closed in July because of a number of personal attacks. Sad. What is your thinking on the matter of civility and dumb (seeming) questions - should a community censure these newbs or the powerful responders who took aim at them? Or, put another way, how can a community remain peaceful with so many levels of understanding and backgrounds.
Thanks,
Will