I have a daily habit of perusing a few forums that are bent toward Linux distributions that I prefer. I don’t choose a username associated with this blog, mostly because it draws attention. So don’t go looking for a “K.Mandla” out there. 😉

I don’t contribute as much as I could (or probably should), but I still consider myself a newbie when it comes to 90 percent of the things I see. That’s just the way I am.

There’s nothing lost in that, since most pleas for help are generally met with a correct response. So there’s no call for my bizarre viewpoint on software usability, or scant practical knowledge on post-2006 hardware to pollute things.

A few days ago I noticed that there was a pattern to almost any hardware help request: Regardless of the topic or issue, invariably the first chimes were to demand core information from tools like lscpi or dmesg.

No harm in that. In most cases, the request was warranted, particularly if compatibility was the topic. If you’re going to help someone troubleshoot specific technology, then it’s helpful to know what the computer is reporting.

Except in a lot of cases, there was no real answer or reply to the original question. Random passersby were simply shouting out “What’s your dmesg say?”, then disappearing back into the ether. No one ever answered or approached the original issue. If the original poster was lucky, someone with practical experience or expertise appeared, and coached them through the issue.

But occasionally the question was just left to rot in the sun. A few spattered demands for information, and then the inexorable slide down the page into obscurity.

But what was worse, random passersby occasionally hounded the poster on seemingly insignificant details that couldn’t possibly contribute to the issue. “Not lspci -vv, lspci -vvv” was one. What really irritated me was a demand for lsusb -t instead of just lsusb, which didn’t really make a difference in that case.

It seemed what was happening was a spattered pecking for information, without any real direction or guiding impulse. Rather than actively answering a question, other forum posters were just parroting the same demands they had heard in the past, perhaps hoping some sort of shotgun effect would lead toward an answer. Not often did that seem to happen.

And another post drifted down the page and into digital history.

Seeing this, and coming to the point of this blabber, I decided to try a little social experiment. I picked a fairly straightforward issue of hardware compatibility, and one that could be solved with what (I guess) was a low-to-intermediate level of expertise. Nothing exotic or esoteric. Just an issue of inserting a particular module, and a USB trinket should work again.

I opened a new account on a site, picked a forum intended for beginners and hardware issues, and asked the question.

And as you probably have guessed, within a few minutes I had the first requisite demand for dmesg, which I supplied. No real answer came.

A few minutes later, right on cue, the output of lsusb, and then tail /var/log/Xorg.0.log. But still no suggestion of lsmod, or anything to do with modprobe.

Another poster wanted to know the maker of the USB toy, and chided me for not mentioning it in the original question.

An hour later I had a very persistent reply, in a somewhat belittling tone, asking which ISO I had used, if I had done the md5sum check, and if the installation had finished cleanly. I replied in the positive to each of these, still wondering if this was leading up to the issue of the missing module.

After that, the same person asked which site I had downloaded it from and if I had done a CD integrity check. Bemusedly, I linked specifically to the torrent, wondering how we had strayed so far from the original problem. Ultimately I got a suggestion to reinstall from USB instead.

I stopped checking the post after about six hours. By then it had fallen off the first page of the help site, and I doubted anyone with expertise would find it so far down the list. In all, I got about 12 replies, only one or two of which were helpful, and none of which mentioned reinserting a module. Like a bad day fishing.

I know that won’t happen every time. And I know it depends vey much on who is available at any given time, and what they know, and how inclined they are to contribute.

But it also speaks to the caliber of help available on some support sites. Well-meaning but underqualified attempts don’t really solve problems, and in some cases they can cause more frustration and confusion than they cure.

You get what you pay for, I suppose. To a large degree we are all learning this as we go, picking up bits and pieces of knowledge when and where they happen to appear. When you’re genuinely new to the Linux landscape, it’s hard to judge quality.

And for those who know the difference, it’s sometimes disappointing to watch in action. 😐