Anton Takk, A Good Samaritan’s Tale or Help All Mac Users

A month or so ago I reinstalled Fedora Core 4 on an old PC I had in my study. I tried Ubuntu for a while but decided I liked Redhat better, thus the reinstall (I’m not a dual booting kind of guy, before you ask). Well, several hours worth of installation (I installed everything on all four disk, hey, why not right? never know what you might need) later I booted my machine up only to get the rather unhelpful notice that my computer wasn’t working because I was experiencing a “GRUB Error 15” during the loading of “Stage 1.5”.

Now, just in case you were wondering, those two particular notices weren’t very helpful. But not to worry, I thought, I will just turn to the vast amount of Linux-related information that is on the web and I will be saved. And so I begin my search. And, with a little bit of searching, I found out just what a GRUB Error 15 really was. Are you ready for it? It was (drum roll please . . .)

File not found

Well, that isn’t very helpful now is it? So I continue to look and after many days of searching I found the following:

- The history of GRUB, all 392 pages of it

- Extensive documentation which, at first glance, appears helpful, but ultimately isn’t

So, after quite a bit of effort I still had nothing to show for all of my pains save for a headache and many wasted hours. So, taking some initiative, I decided to hit the forums. Posting my problems on two, very large, Fedora/Redhat centric websites I received a grand total of 0 responses to my pleas. Yes, that is right, 0, nadda, zip, zilch, nuthin, goose egg, void, null, you get the idea. So, that was strike two.

Not to be daunted I went back to Fedora’s main site and looked for an option three. It is at this point that I realized just how frustrating “free” software can be. You see, if this was a problem with OS X I could quite easily go over to http://www.apple.com/support and browse their list of manuals, FAQs, help topics et al. Or, I could have just gone down to the local Apple store and asked them to help me. But no, I am doing the “Open Source” approach and so things are just a little bit more painful. Anyway, option 3 turned out to be IRC. For those of you don’t know what that means (much like myself all of 3 days ago) let me help you out.

IRC stands for Internet Relay Chat. And basically it is the text version of walking into a crowded room, listening to every conversation simultaneously, and then plunging in to whichever one seems interesting at the time. It isn’t the best system but it does work. Anyway, for anyone wanting to give it a go on the Mac you will need an IRC client. A client being a program that connects to different types of IRC channels and lets you talk to other users.

In my case I decided to use a program called Ircle. And a very nifty program it is. The help section can be confusing and it takes a bit of doing in order to get your initial settings straight, but eventually it becomes quite a serviceable application. Anyway, using Ircle I was able to connect to the Fedora channel and begin asking people for help. It was here that I met a very helpful native of Colorado named Anton Takk. He spent almost 3 hours with me online walking me through steps to fix my machine.

Wait. Stop. Back up. 3 hours? 3 HOURS? Like, more than 2 less than 4, periods of 60 minutes? Yes, that is correct. This nice person spent 3 hours online with me as he helped me to trouble shoot my computer. Oh, and did I mention that this is the first time we have met?

Anyone who has ever done any type of tech support knows that, for the most part, it is tedious, boring, tiresome, frustrating and unrewarding work. I should know, I have done plenty of it. Whether it is helping friends, family members, classmates, coworkers or just strangers who have asked me for help I can attest to the fact that it is not very fun. Not very fun at all.

So, maybe you can better understand now how amazed I was that Mr. Takk was willing to help me for so long. And do you know what the best part of this is? In the end, once we had tried everything, I ultimately had to reinstall Fedora from scratch. Guess what? He walked me through a custom install so that he could be sure my system would operate correctly. This man has the patience of a saint.

So why am I telling you all of this? Several reasons. Christmas has just passed and hopefully you helped someone this season. Maybe you showed them a small bit of kindness and that stuck with them. Maybe you did something nice, something that really helped them out, and it cost you very little. Let me say that it was worth it. I was on the verge of giving up on Linux until Mr. Takk helped me out. He didn’t have to, but he did. It wasn’t his job, I didn’t pay him anything, he helped me because he could. And do you know what, that is a great endorsement for Fedora. What a great community they must have.

This is something I have found in attempting to get people to use Macs. More than the arguments, or the rhetoric, or the price, or the software it is simply helping them that makes the biggest difference. Everyone is a beginner at some point and everyone needs a helping hand now and again. So, before I go, I would entreat you, in this coming year, to show some more compassion. Help out those who may not be as technically savvy as you. Take some time to answers their questions and then repeat your answers if they don’t understand. And when you become frustrated do try and remember that, at one point or another, you were just like them. Trying to learn something new and having a hard time of it. So try and be the type of person who makes a difference. Someone who doesn’t mind helping. And while you are doing it think back to someone who once helped you and smile.