On Sun, Nov 9, 2014 at 6:59 PM, Máirín Duffy wrote:
>This is a good case for using DevAssistant. And the professors aren't telling them what to install to get their assignments done? (?!) Do they not have lab sessions where part of the first class is spent configuring their laptops to complete assignments? Even some of my 400-level comp sci classes had environment configuration stuff in the first lecture.
There were a lot of points in your mail and they are worth addressing but since I was in college doing a Master's program not too long ago, I wanted to reply to this quickly:
Typically professors are willing to help out or point you in the right direction if you are using Windows or perhaps even a Mac depending on what they use themselves but so far in all the classes I have attended, I am the only person using Linux on my laptop and therefore when I get struck, I got to figure out the equivalent tools myself. Sometimes I give up and just use a VM but most often than not, the tools were already in the repository but I didn't know the names of the packages and yum was returning too much while GNOME Software was returning too little or nothing.
Our tools rock if you know exactly what you are looking for but are fairly unhelpful if you don't. GNOME Software in Fedora 21 is good enough for me to put it in front of someone who doesn't know Linux and expect them to find *desktop* apps but if it is not too selfish to ask, I would want the same for command line apps too.
Btw, the usability on devassistant when I tried it out was pretty bad. I know you blogged about the problems you ran into and I will file bug reports when I have time as well. It certainly has potential but it's nothing something I would advertise heavily at this point.