This image was created by /u/[email protected] for this comment here: https://discuss.tchncs.de/comment/21735989. I had encouraged them to post it somewhere, but as far as I can tell, they never did.
Panel 1: “Installing Windows 20 years ago” screenshot of install wizard with just a couple buttons
Panel 2: “Installing Linux 20 years ago” screenshot of a busy command line
Panel 3: “Installing Windows today” screenshot of a busy command line
Panel 4: “Installing Linux today” screenshot of install wizard with just a couple buttons
Asking for Linux help online is still just as toxic and useless as 20 years ago.
Being told “RFTM! noob”, isn’t as common as it was 20 years ago. At least with Fedora where good help can be found. Still, there are a good number of questions that just don’t get answered either.
Try Reddit or Stackoverflow for a contrasting experience.
I often go through r/fedora and I very seldom come across anyone belittling anyone else. You might not get an answer at all, but it’s seldom anyone will tell you to RTFM. I have little experience with stackoverflow, so I can’t say anything about them.
Being told to read the manual did me good.
We should bring back RTFM, and cease allowing it to be smeared as something bad. Burnout is no fun. RTFM spares developers from burnout, allowing them to continue developing good software (and have it be well documented… if only users would read the flippin manual!) ;D
RTFM is good and can be useful for newcomers, if you help them through finding and understanding the RTFM. Many of them are poorly organized and written. It can be hard to understand them.
All the support forums I went to (redhat, gentoo, debian) in 2005 were friendly helpful and well moderated. What is this fud?