I have to say that I have been impressed thus far with the patience and politeness of the Linux community to the windows users who have got the N900 and have been asking various questions in the forums.

I haven't come across one rude post by a fed up Linux user who has had a go because of a newbie asking a simple question so hats off to you guys.

I personally know very little about linux but with the community willing to embrace us windows users I can see more of us getting deeper into linux and learning and using it more and more.

I for one am going to setup a linux platform to learn a few things and have a go at developing a simple app. I know nothing about Python at the moment but think that is the place to start.

So thanks once again Linux Guys and Gals. You have made us feel welcome.

It's all a part of the World Domination plan.

Thanks for playing!

Indeed.

As a professional with Windows, I realize some of the questions are quite low level, still, nothing but help and honest opinions, I'm actually learning here.

+1

We all started somewhere. Some start with a desktop and work their way down. Some start with the terminal and work they way up.

I help out in a lot of places not just here and even tend to answer the most mundane and irrelevant questions. Sometimes it might not be a direct question but a link to a doc or a search string to use. But I try to always provide atleast some answer.

I've never minded helping out new people. I've dealt with many, and while I don't particularly remember what it was like (I was into Linux and computers when I was 10) - I am still a "noob" every time I decide to pickup some new project and have to learn.

Unfortunately I have found, in the past, that I do have my limits tho. I absolutely love helping people learn.... I can't stand doing things FOR people. If I find myself answering the same question from the same person multiple times.... I'll stop answering.

So, I like to tell people using Linux: Help us, help you - LEARN what we have to teach .

I agree; HOWEVER...., let's not "high five" them by being lazy and not using Google. I have used linux and I can say the best way to learn is not always to ask. It's to do and read (not always in that order). Don't get lazy and take advantage of them.

Sorry...it had to be said.

thanks for this, OP. let the good things roll and it'll probably come back to you some day. this is the attitude that should be here instead of "OMG DELIVERIES DELAYED" and "OMG N900 IS A PIECE OF ****!!!!".

I started out with Ubuntu using the desktop as much as possible and avoiding the command line like the plague. It wasn't maybe half an hour before I began to notice that I needed the command line more and more. A few years later and I have moved to Arch Linux (and thus away from problems I feel were caused by having things set up for me instead of doing them from the ground up), and swear by tiling window managers and the command line.

To be quite honest, I found google to be the least helpful learning resource of all that I found. The best places for me to learn were the distro's forum ([url=http://ubuntuforums.org/]ubuntu's[/ur], gentoo's, and [url=http://bbs.archlinux.org[/url] being the best IMHO), IRC channels of the projects that I am interested in(heck I still go to #ubuntu on irc.freenode.net just to help out every once and a while), and a man page if provided (type "man name_of_command"). Don't get me wrong, google is great, but it helps if you already know what your searching for, and how to search for it. For example, "change terminal fonts and colors on llnux" may yield good enough results, but ".Xdefaults color schemes" will yield more relevant ones faster.

As for the reception of the Linux community, I have only gotten a RTFM reply when a question I asked didn't indicate that I had exerted any effort into reaching a conclusion myself. For example, saying "I can't start a program", versus "I can't start a program because it's not in the app menu" or "xterm says I don't have permission to start this program?"

Wow, I promise I wasn't planning on writing this much. Sorry. Here's the short version: I'm grateful for the Linux community so much so that I try to give back as much as I have received.

this is really good point!

e: I hope I'll have soon some spare time to work with wiki (fcking work&christmas hassle), I think there could be created a new page to instruct how to ask help etc. if it gets done, I will add your point to there with big letters.