forums.xandros.com

[Davepet]

Welcome to Xandros, nealklomp!

Dave
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Friends don't let friends use windows
GLPW
Registered Linux User #301200

[woodsmoke]

nealklomp

Welcome to the friendliest forum on the net!

don't be a stranger!

ain't xandro great!
woodsmoke
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If the eco-ists would only shut up, I wonder if the sound of their droning would be replaced by the sound of normal people fitting solar panels and making soup from nettles and twigs.(J Clarkson)

[nealklomp]

Just fighting the usual first fight it seems... The Wireless Modem. Been at it all day. Reading, learning and tweaking.

[Davepet]

What wireless modem are you using?

In control center>hardware dection, does it appear to be recognized corectly?

Does it show up as an option in control center>network>network connection?

Dave
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Friends don't let friends use windows
GLPW
Registered Linux User #301200

[nealklomp]

Card is Intel(R) Pro/Wireless 2915ABG Net
Whats happening is that the wireless card is recognizing and listing networks withing range, icluding mine. And all seems well there. But internet connection Wizard only recognizes the direct line Broadcom ETH 0, not the wiresless ETH 1. And thus we have the problem. I have done NDISwrapper for the driver--although again it is working and infact has the network recognized--it is something in Xandros.

The wrieless card is recognized in the hardware detection utility.
Spent most of yesterday on this, may not get back to it today.

I should also mention, I've yet to get through all the postings on this subject here.

Comp is a Dell Insp 6000 by the way.

[Davepet]

I wouldn't use ndiswrapper if there are native Linux drivers that work, I'm not clear if that is the case here?

In control center>network>network connection>interfaces tab, does the card show up as an option under "network interface"?

If so, how have you set up the other options in both the interfaces & woreless tabs?

Dave
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Friends don't let friends use windows
GLPW
Registered Linux User #301200

[fxsti01]

I have to agree with "cprise" here, that article is rather harsh. No matter how true or not it may be, it is rather brash for any newbie to linux in general. I understand the idea that there should be a post explaining that linux is not windows to newbies, but this particular article, needs editing and cleaning up.

just my own personal thoughts on the issue.







Now hit the esc key and edit that file! lol!!!!!!

[brashley46]

I have a gripe about the forum that has finally moved me to make a suggestion. Every time I close a forum session everything on the screen is marked read, whether I have actually got around to it or not. I'd like to have the option to mark all read or come back and finish whatever I've not seen yet, but marking everything read means I have to hunt by date.
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B. Ross Ashley
http://brashley46.no-ip.info


Registered Linux user # 420119

[Davepet]

Yeah, I've given up complaining about that. It doesn't do any good

Truly a PITA, though, especially if you get an email of a new post on a hot topic, but don't have a couple of hours to spend on all the other posts.

Sometimes I fire up a different browser that isn't set to auto log in & just lurk

Dave
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Friends don't let friends use windows
GLPW
Registered Linux User #301200

[fxsti01]

while out surfing found this article,

http://www.desktopos.com/modules/articles/article.php?id=47

author is objective and just gives the facts, leaves out emotions.




Just a thought,

fxsti01

[Davepet]

fxsti01 wrote:

[tonewbie]

Just one idea. I know it would be a huge job.

Searching the forums can be a real pain in the butt at times.

And I guess that's partly why there are so many duplicate and triplicate threads on the same issue (and yes I know some folks just don't bother to do a search first)...in turn making it difficult to search the forums!!

There are some incredibly knowledgeable folks on here and perhaps it would be helpful to have sort of a "best of" the forums.

That might be one way to consolidate some of the more helpful and useful info posted by the more "expert" Xandros users.

I do very much like the "red zone" idea too.

[Brian Wallen]

I won't repeat my agreement with several ideas put forth here about a better support structure for Xandros. I've been an IT manager that tried to move to a greatly improved OS (OS/2) in the early '90s when Windows 3.x was the best that MS could do. I've got battle scars from an eventual switch to NT4. Today, I might try to build a business case for adopting Xandros in a small to medium sized, say less than a 150 seat organization. Licensing cost savings might be major with a plan to switch non-power users to Open Office and the flexibility to use CX for W32 apps that Open Office couldn't supply. I'd be nervous about support, however. My techs really depended on MS Web support for self help, partly because we had our own Lotus Notes knowledgebase where we not only recorded our own problem records and fixes, but captured and stored related entries from external KBs that we could annotate and crosslink. I am retired now and support only myself, but I continue to maintain my own Notes KBs and I see a major difference when I'm using an organized KB compared to the Xandros forum. So, one unmet need I see for both kinds of users is the lack of structured tech support information on Xandros.

We don't really have a Xandros knowledgebase of the sort offered by many hardware and software companies. The Xandros page for the knowledgebase includes 12 items, 7 of which relate to distribution and licensing issues. Two of the five remaining are brief articles about hardware. The hcl entry is the only one that provides any detailed information.

Three years ago, my idea was an "open" knowledgebase that was structured in a way that enforced a level of organization on contributors. Moderators could have a further refining effect on the organization and content. At that time, Dave P and I had an extended chat about the deficiency of a forum as an efficient way to manage knowledge about Xandros. I outlined some ideas and some other users expressed an interest in the idea of a Xandros hosted database that allowed users to make structured entries. I seem to recall that Xandros suggested they were exploring this idea, but the current KB is little more than a general FAQ.

DEFICIENCIES

- Few of us are disciplined enough to provide all the information that is needed or helpful to those whom we ask for help. Forms structured to collect that information and tailored to the kinds of questions and problems presented could improve this.
- Text searches are not a very reliable way to find relevant information. Even users who are sensitive to search procedures can't always know how to intelligently title their topics; the eventual understanding of the problem may not have much to do with their initial encounter with it.
- Less experienced users may not know how to construct search arguments.
- Forums provide no effective way to even encourge contributors to think in a structured way, apart from topics. I think that Dave and I concluded that even trying to get forum users to create intelligent topic/subject names was like trying to herd cats.

As a result, we often don't find the valuable kernels amongst the chaff. Regular contributers get caught in the choice of repeating their explanations or not being responsive to current questions. Users seeking help may seem lazy. I recently needed some information about a lilo problem. I found no hits on the error message "L 80 80..." I was getting something like 29 pages of hits for "lilo", many of which I couldn't screen for relevance just by looking at the subject, so I temporarily decided to look elsewhere.

I'd be very surprised if the Xandros techs did not have some kind of database that supported problem diagnosis. Making that into something that they would feel comfortable publishing and maintaining would require significant resources, but an open database might be conveniently used by Xandros staff to copy in entries based on selectively mining information from a private Xandros database.

I'm not suggesting that this open knowledgebase would replace the forum, but complement it. The forum is an excellent vehicle to explore problems, compare solutions, solicit alternative explanations. The forum could still be focus for questions and defining problems, particularly by those without the background to find their way through the knowledgebase, but as the KB grew, there would be incentive to look there first, since it would be an immediate source. A structured database would be attractive to contributors because they could create crafted responses to specific problems, then point to entries in the KB, rather than having to recreate explanations. The structure would be a constant reminder for contributors to stay on message--this would be a place for descriptive information, not opinion, exploration of ideas, technical and political philosophies, rants about MS.

Distillation of technical information is important. The forum format doesn't sufficiently reinforce followup, pruning, editing--there really isn't a concept of a final publishable document; our forum entries too often are loose and baggy monsters. From personal experience, I know that sometimes I ask questions, get some answers, do some problem-solving on my own and don't make any final posts stating definitively what the resolution was. I've seen a lot of dedication from regular contributors on the Xandros forum. I think that they get satisfaction in providing accurate information and helping other users solve problems. I think if they have a better way to present information, they will use it creatively and take pride in its accuracy and completeness.

This project has to be realistic. I suspect that is why this is still no real Xandros-created knowledgebase. Just creating the database shell or finding an existing application, installing and hosting it might be a cost that Xandros management would feel was feasible, when an entire Xandros-created/maintained KB might seem unrealistic.

We are three years on now and there have been modifications made to the forums that have attempted to address some of these issues, but I note in recent posts some of the same dissatisfaction that was present in 2003 when we had the original discussion.

For those interested in the complete earlier discussion, it's in this topic.
http://forums.xandros.com/viewtopic.php?p=9817#9817
I had created some off-forum pages that were linked to my original post. I've cleaned up the urls in the original post so there are no longer broken links. Probably the most relevant of these is a page where I tried to outline a data structure for this shared database:
http://www.prairienet.org/b-wallen/Systems/OS/Xandros/XKB_InfStructure.htm
and a page where I tried to outline some of the problems I could foresee with data classification as it related to trying to use the existing forum as a platform for a more structured way of recording information.
http://www.prairienet.org/b-wallen/Systems/OS/Xandros/XKB_Guidelines.htm

[drl]

Hi.

(Note: as of July 2009, the site wlakb.editme.com is closed.)

I have put together a few links on this topic (including the links just mentioned above) at one of the wikis I use. I have also placed there my brief discussion of blogs, forums, and wikis for the purpose of user support.

I have also presented a table comparing characteristics of some forums, wikis, etc., for Xandros, Ubuntu, SuSE, and Fedora.

Feel free to mosey around the main public pages, but they are not related to the topics that Brian Wallen has just written about ... cheers, drl

http://wlakb.editme.com/SuggestionsFromXandrosExperienceDennis

http://wlakb.editme.com/

( This post is somewhat related to a specific user-problem-experience with Xandros support forums at: http://forums.xandros.com/viewtopic.php?t=22615&start=90 )

( edit: notification that the site wlakb is closed.)
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