DVCS (was Re: Moving to D)

[Daniel Gibson]

Am 11.01.2011 22:36, schrieb Walter Bright:
> Andrej Mitrovic wrote:
>> That's my biggest problem with Linux. Having technical problems is not
>> the issue, finding the right solution in the sea of forum posts is the
>> problem.
>
> The worst ones begin with "you might try this..." or "I think this might work,
> but YMMV..." How do these wind up being the top ranked results by google? Who
> embeds links to that stuff?
>
> My experience with Windows is, like yours, the opposite. The top ranked result
> will be correct and to the point. No weasel wording.

Those results are often in big forums like ubuntuforums.org that get a lot of 
links etc, so even if one thread doesn't have many incoming links, it may still 
get a top ranking.

Also my blog entries (hosted at wordpress.com) get on the google frontpage when 
looking for the specific topic, even though my blog is mostly unknown, has 2-20 
visitors per day and almost no incoming links.. Googles algorithms often do seem 
like voodoo ;)

Also: Many problems (and their correct solutions) heavily depend on your system. 
What desktop environment is used, what additional stuff (dbus, hal, ...) is 
used, what are the versions of this stuff (and X.org), what distribution is 
used, ...
There may be different default configurations shipped depending on what 
distribution (and what version of that distribution) you use, ...
So there often is no single correct answer that will work for anyone.

Still, in my experience those HOWTOs often work (it may help to look at multiple 
HOWTOs and compare them if you're not sure, if it applies to your system) or at 
least push you in the right direction.

Cheers,
- Daniel