[wellylug] Different approaches [was Screwed up laptop :( ]

[Damon Lynch]

On Sat, 2003-06-28 at 08:53, Jamie Dobbs wrote:
> In trying to install Gentoo on my laptop I have completely borked my
> Windows XP intallation on it (bloody NTFS!) - can anyone suggest an easy
> way to remedy the situation where XP will not boot and gives a 'cannot
> find NTLDR' error.
> I have googled and tried a few suggestions but haven't managed to get it
> working yet.

I find it interesting to compare the Gentoo  and Mandrake approaches to
problems like this one. From where I'm sitting, it seems that the
Mandrake approach is to get their programmers to take care of these
things for you.  Most of the time they do a good job, and their tools
work.  I've never seen the problem found above, not because of my own
skill, but the skill of the Mandrake coders.  Sometimes their tools
don't work too well in some situations, e.g Internet connections using
both a modem and a LAN, and that can be frustrating.  In this case the
user has to learn up on what the configuration files do for various
programs. For instance to take other examples we can think of shorewall
and samba configuration when the Mandrake GUI tools are too limited.

Whereas it seems to me that with Gentoo one needs to know a lot more
about how things actually work in Linux in order to have a reliable,
dependable system.  It's not an option but an imperative to have this
knowledge.

Using the approach of Mandrake means less time is spent on configuration
(hopefully) and more time using the system to achieve tasks we use
computers to do.

Whereas with systems like Gentoo, a primary source of satisfaction
presumably comes from learning about the system itself, and watching
things hopefully fit together the way they ideally should.  It's a bit
like compiling your own programs and watching the messages scroll by
compared to watching a progress bar advance as grpmi installs packages
for you.  Compiling is raw and sometimes rough, but when it works you
think "wow".  Whereas with grpmi the graphical progress bar steadily
moving across it's long and narrow window leads to an expectation of
"this should work first time".

Make sense?

Damon
-- 
Damon Lynch <damon at asianreflection.com>