Surprised and Disappointed (my 2 cent philosophy)

[pluglist at plug.org]

I've been a linux beginner for about 5-6 years now.  I have it installed on
a second hard drive and when I want to mess around with it I disconnect my
windows hard drive and plug in the linux hard drive.  I know there are dual
boot options with lilo or grub but I got stung pretty bad one time after
doing a linux install which completely killed my windows system.  From that
experience among many others, I've realized that I have to take my time
with linux and go at a slower pace.  I've been going really slow because
after these few years I still consider myself a newbie.  I pretty much know
that if I want to solve a problem, I'm gonna have to do a lot of searching
and READING.  After reading your post, I completely got the impression that
you are like I was at the beginning of my quest to learn more.  I was gung
ho and wanted/expected any linux OS to run smoothly after a fresh install.
That was not the case.  I had to read up on all the hardware compatibility
lists and do special driver tweaking on hardware that wasn't recognized.

Linux isn't something you want to give to your grandmother (assuming a type
writter is the last 'word processor' she used).  It's in my opinion that
its not even something a tech savy person should use if they don't want to
spend time reading and searching for information.  I love Linux, even
though its caused much frustration for me, because of its openess.  Yes I
was attracted to it at first because it wasn't Microsoft but its grown on
me so to speak even after all the frustration its given me.

I'm not sure what you meant about turning off the screen saver or just
changing it.  If you meant you just don't know how to turn off a screen
saver altogther, I'm not so sure you've done enough reading.  To me it
seems like you're just trying to rush through things and expecting that
just by quickly scanning through the menus in X that you should know most
everything there is to know.  Maybe that assessment went way overboard but
thats the impression I got.

I can't offer any assistance until I get home from work but I just wanted
to throw in my 2 cents about blaming Linux in general for your problems.
I've just found over these few years that over half my problems with Linux
was because I didn't read up on the documentation.  I guess it all just
boils down to is you've just got to have patience and give it time.  If you
can't do that then maybe Linux isn't for you.  I kind of agree with one of
the suggestions already posted that if Windows works for you then by all
means don't waste your time with something else....use whatevers best to
get the job done.

I hope my comments weren't offending in any way.  My hope is to just
convince you that if you want to keep working with Linux, be patient.
Don't be so quick to blame Linux itself especially if you haven't spent the
time to post a question or do a few searches.

Ok I'm rambling a few paragraphs back....hope you get the screen saver
issue fixed.  I'll try and give you a suggestion when I get home if you
don't already have it fixed.  At the rate you're getting responses you
probably already have it fixed.  =)



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