Paid Linux Support For Individual Users? 19
Frustrated and Disappointed asks: "I have been using Linux for a decade, but sometimes I just don't know how to solve a problem. What's more, I don't have the time (or interest) to teach myself enough about some obscure subject to debug it myself. Are there companies or freelancers out there willing to provide paid support for individuals on a problem-by-problem basis? I don't need yearly maintenance or weekly support, just a couple times a year. This time around, for example, I can't get a desktop box to play sound. The HOWTOs are years out of date, there are no man pages, the mailing lists are silent, and the #debian channels were nothing but insults. While I don't mind doing some of my own problem solving -- I'm a very technical person -- I have a job and other responsibilities, and I'm not interested in hacking sound drivers to begin with. I don't have the option of installing a whole new distro just to qualify for a vendor's support plan."
Re:I recommend... (Score:1, Offtopic)
But yeah, it's way more complicated and confusing than XP and you look like a hacker to all your friends even when you're just checking your disc drive.
And a lone idea shall lead them to the Holy Lands (Score:5, Insightful)
I hear a lot of people asking what they can do to contribute to Linux / the open source movement. Hold cheap one on one or one on a few classes and bring people up to speed, make yourself available to answer these 'silly' questions and whatever you do don't be malicious or demeaning
Re:And a lone idea shall lead them to the Holy Lan (Score:3, Insightful)
So what do YOU define as peer level support?
I define peer level support as opening up a mailing list of some sort, and asking a question, and having a few people ask you furthur questions and perhaps get the pr
Re:And a lone idea shall lead them to the Holy Lan (Score:3, Insightful)
I used the term peer to in
Re:And a lone idea shall lead them to the Holy Lan (Score:3, Informative)
Paid support could never act like that.
Peers will never have rules of conduct on how they treat their "customers" and shouldn't.
What stands in the way isn't the peer support going on, it's the lack of a really good quality paid support company.
Example: RedHat's paid support pretty well sucks, and they're probably one of the "better" ones around. Granted I only had to deal with them on a single issue on the phone, one time -- but that was enough to make me
New Company forming... or not? (Score:2, Interesting)
The real issue is that there are simply too many distributions (and to a lessor extent, too much variation in hardware). Err... let me be more clear. I could choose to support Debian, RedHat and SuSE. Those happen to be the ones with the most available documentation such that we couldn't reasona
debian help (Score:2, Informative)
Also
http://www.debianplanet.org/ [debianplanet.org]
Re:debian help (Score:3, Informative)
Then there's the annual installfests that many LUGs run, and a good LUG will also run a workshop every few months where you can bring along your PC to get a tricky sound card or other peripheral configured properly.
This
Google Answers! (Score:4, Informative)
You bet, give me a call (Score:1)
LUGs (Score:4, Informative)
I've had potential clients ring me up and ask if I do personal linux support (as opposed to supporting a company). I say, yes I do, but I charge so much it would be far cheaper just to ask on the LUGs. I pointed out that I read the LUGs, and may well end up helping you, but I do the LUG thing for free.
I'll be curious ... (Score:2)
Email, Not IRC (Score:3, Insightful)
Try the debian-user mailing list. Go to www.debian.org to subscribe. While you are there take a look at the consultants list. Some of us are quite willing to do the sort of work you want.
Re:Email, Not IRC (Score:3, Informative)
TOTALLY agree! (Score:4, Insightful)
So, what's the solution? The only thing I can think of right now is to create a semi-official IRC channel/forum, where volunteers are peer-reviewed and ranked.
(BTW - If anyone cares, the install went like this: Created a boot CD with DOS USB CD-ROM drivers to boot Partition Magic 8, to resize my Win2k partition and create ext2 and swap partitions. Back in Windows, I installed VMWare (free trial) and gave it direct access to the partitions I created for linux. Downloaded the minimal ISO (few MB) and "booted" from it, emulated in VMWare. Did a minimal install. Did the trick to let you use the NT bootloader to dual-boot. Rebooted into linux, installed the extra packages I needed.)