I began exploring the Ubuntu discussion pages at ubuntuforums.org within the “Absolute Beginner Talk” forum as befits my debutante status in regards to Linux. This debbie could not understand in any kind of plain English over 90% of the thread titles he then confronted. I immediately was attracted to the thread entitled “Completely LOST!” as I felt the same way.
As I read through the discussion thread beginning with a problem familiar to all Ubuntu users, namely an initial download of the .iso Ubuntu package, I began to enjoy the community of support for this open source endeavor aptly summed up by a quote appended to one of the participant’s posts:
“A person with ubuntu is open and available to others, affirming of others, does not feel threatened that others are able and good, for he or she has a proper self-assurance that comes from knowing that he or she belongs in a greater whole and is diminished when others are humiliated or diminished, when others are tortured or oppressed.” ~ Archbishop Desmond Tutu, 1999
After installing the .iso Ubuntu package myself (I’m currently awaiting further instructions), I feel relief at having landed in this forum as if by flight. The quick response, the selfless attitude towards service reminiscent of librarianship at its best, and the expertise of the Ubuntu crowd--in both a properly proffered panoply of pedagogy and the expected technical knowledge--are to be envied by anything in the private, for-profit sectors of our economy. As Archbishop Tutu and the participants at this forum remind me, sometimes the best available technology is human.
B.A.W. (best available wishes),
B.A.T.
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