>
> Thanks to Mark for working almost the whole meeting trying to get MEPIS
> to print, and finally succeeding. Robin hasn't said a word beyond that
> it was all my fault for (being Republican) whatever <g>. Point and click
> Linux indeed . . . Hope the book sales are good!
Well... I've been almost constantly on the road lately, plus I have an
80 hour/week job. I have limited time to provide one-on-one installation
help, and I *already* get close to 100 emailed support requests/day. I
was not at last night's meeting because I'm in Atlanta right now for
Usenix/LISA.
Pete, if I had had time to give you personal help, I would have. I know
you're special and deserve it. But I have been regrettably short of
time. I apologize for not being more than one person. That's my fault,
not yours.
>
> Warren (MEPIS guy) never responded to the emails since the release
> version was out, a decidedly bad sign. The message evidently is that
> MEPIS is great *if* it works, if it doesn't you are on your own, at
> least unless your local LUG can help.
Or instead of expecting personal replies from someone whose current "all
waking hours" obsession is getting ProMEPIS out the door, you could have
searched and/or posted in the Mepis.org help forum. Warren loves to give
personal support to everyone who asks for it, but MEPIS has gotten too
popular for this to work. At least if he posts something in the forum
many people can read the answer, plus other developers and experienced
users hang out there and now do most of the question-answering.
Your local LUG is still/always your best place to turn for free
individual support. Note that if you want one-on-one support from
Microsoft or most other proprietary software vendors, you pay dearly for
it *over and above* your original license fee. It is rather unkind of
you to expect Warren or any other Linux distro packager to make his work
available free or for a very low price and offer the level of support
for which others charge $60/hour or more. But that is the nature of the
Human. I still love the guy who emailed Linux.com and *demanded* that we
send an engineer to his office immediately to install Linux on all his
systems -- and said he did not expect to be charged for this service
since "Linux is free."
Support is always a problem and a BIG expense. AOL is about as
dumbed-down as you can get, but over 80% of the company's employees do
customer service and tech support.
I used to help run installfests and do user-level Linux training before
2000, but now I have hardly any time for that kind of thing, which is
sad. One day I hope I can cut my schedule back and be more helpful, but
right now it's a better use of my time to write books, give group
presentations, and produce training videos so that I (and others) don't
need to answer the same questions over and over.
- Robin
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