You are not a beautiful and unique snowflake

[KanadaKid]

So lately I've been on IRC more than normal... mostly avoiding school work towards the end of the semester. I've noticed a couple trends that I feel are hindering more than helping the community as a whole.

 

Firstly, Kext installers. I know the makers of these mean well, but unless this installer puts in multiple files and edits them on the fly, kexts don't need installers. Dropping a kext file in /System/Library/Extensions then running chown -R root:wheel /System/Library/Extensions... not hard. And no, I don't chmod my kexts, never had to. By giving an installer to someone that doesn't know better, you're robbing them of the skills necessary to salvage an install if/when they screw it up. The command line is your friend, not your foe... treat him as such.

 

File begging... wtf. Ok, so this is something I have done. In experimenting with updates and whatnot, I've hosed my system a couple times and needed someone to send me a couple specific kexts. But you know what, I've been on IRC with a lot of these people for over a year, I don't feel bad asking for a little help. This doesn't apply to so many new people who ask for the whole kext folder from a given install... if you need all of the kexts, and not something specific, are you sure you even know what you're doing?

 

And on that note, people fixing problems for others remotly. I've heard of certain people doing remote installs for people, or logging in and fixing various problems. With an OS like this, nobody should be doing this sort of thing. If you don't have the skills to get this OS running, maybe you should stick to something simple. OS X, in the incarnation most of us use, is a reward for the work needed to get a perfect install going. Right now my install is running the best it ever has, and I couldn't be happier. But I had to tweak a lot of little things, build a kext or 2, and install once or twice to get everything to this level of perfection. So you know what , I DESERVE IT... do you?

 

And yet after my perfect install, my first words on IRC were not looking for praise. This is where the quote in the title comes in. zOMG, you got OSX to install??? Hey guess what, so did we. There's a pretty big group of us that installed 10.4.1, and have been with it since last September. There are certain community members who are actually doing new stuff, like new chipset kexts, sata controllers, and of course the extensive kernel work. If one of these guys announces they got something which previously didn't work to work, that deserves a round of applause. These guys(and maybe girls) go under the appreciation radar far too often, and this is sad. But everyone else in the channel has had a working install at some point, so in that regard you are not special.

 

Wow... that's pretty negative, but it's against my policy to not post what I write. Maybe I should seek professional help.

 

/Scott

 

"You are not a beautiful and unique snowflake. You are the same decaying organic matter as everyone else, and we are all part of the same compost pile." ~Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club, Chapter 17