USB Wifi Dongle

[Luke]

rahlquist,

Let me start by saying that nothing of what you've written explains or warrants rude behaviour. I have seen many of tkeiser's posts, some of which corrected me and others (and I have no issue with admitting that he was correct) and were written in a condescending way. What good does this do ? - the logic escapes me. If a problem has been solved then point them to the solution; if the problem hasn't been solved point them to where it is discussed. 

Now I am not a programmer, I'm a medical doctor and an electronics/ tinkering enthusiast. I cannot, unfortunately, contribute in a meaningful way to the actual development of software and I bet that the majority of people on this forum are just like me in this respect. I have witnessed, however, exchanges of information between people who can and do contribute in a meaningful way. And things are progressing because of their hard work, and not only on the software --- just look at lennyraposo's bug-reporting / resource website, its a thing of beauty ! (and I'm sure that it will aid cooperation considerably if used right). As a side-note, I believe this is where users will get their images from in the future, so the problem with old and problem-riddled versions of software should die out.   

Regrading restructuring the forums -  I believe that recently there was an attempt to clean up the forums but I agree with you that some work is still needed to make things transparent over here. I do believe that the reason why you are seeing many instances of the same questions is because it is relatively hard to find the right thread. Its early days, I am confident this will get solved sooner or later.  

Lastly, of course some people do not understand the nature of the issues they encounter; just earlier, on a different thread I wrote "(...) I believe that the real problem is that people do not understand what they are buying --- or in this case bought. These boards, at this stage in time, are essentially development kits. They are aimed at devs and enthusiasts - hence people who really understand what a Beta-build means and understand that certain things will not work right out of the box(for a while in some instances). This isn't a phone you buy in a store or a set-top box for watching media; this is a platform for development and tinkering." 

I will look into what longsleep posted, thank you for brining it to my attention. I just wanted to assure the OP that support for third-party wifi dongles will be there eventually.

Re the IRC channel: 1) that Freenode IRC channel was a zombie-town; 2) it gave me something to do with my second Pine64. Do you think I did something wrong, or do you really appreciate the effort?

Cheers, 

Luke 

Some people are naturally sweet others are not. Some get made not to be. Ive see both sides of the fence and while being short or abrupt or snitty to some may be just how they are I understand to others that could be offensive. I've been the n00b user on more than one occasion (omg asking questions about sendmail in 2003 I will never forget how rude that community was). That said I also understand, having worked in desktop support for a time, how annoying it can be when someone asks for help then proceeds to tell you that you are wrong about the possible causation. So there are merits on both side. I've learned over the years to distance myself and dont let people get to me. Tkaiser may not be Mary Poppins but if you pay attention to what he says there is lots of knowledge to be gathered even if you have to duck a few rocks. Hell even I get terse at times. I know language can be a barrier and trust me I know geography can be one too more than most would realize. 

The documentation and forums are what they are. The sad part is that Tkaiser has gotten to repeat himself over and over about some things. Proactive forum management would have seen the second time he posted a gripe about old OS's for example, gone to the wiki, moved all the old images to an archive area with a warning to not requests support for them as they are outdated and no longer supported. 

As to people not understanding, yes and I knew this would be an issue with the project. The marketing was too shiny, it even had me believing and I know better. 

As for your irc efforts, bottom line to me is this, we have a product, lets rename the product Pool. We all have buckets. If we all work together to fill the pool it will be done faster. If we all put up our own pool, our own support sites, our own subreddits, our own groups on other support sites like stack exchange and experts exchange etc what we will get is a bunch of pools that fill much more slowly, with much duplicated effort.  I dont have a problem with what you did. You are free to do as you choose.

I'll just comment on the last thing you wrote about IRC. I don't think that it splinters or detracts from the community on the forum. Not in the slightest. In fact, if anything, over the past week (or so) that the server has been up I have witnessed quite the opposite. If anything I would call it 'complimentary'. 

@XFSmiles sorry for having this exchange under your original post. 
 XFSmiles