[mehrdadn]

> We are not your tech support, so I can tell you: [expletive] off.

1. I wasn't here to seek tech support at all. The discussion was on package managers and I was sharing an experience I had. Users such as you decided to issue judgments that I must have necessarily ignored apt and broken my system by... installing non-OSS software (?!) without any information on my actual system setup. As I said in the very beginning, I already reverted to my backup. Nowhere did I solicit tech support, and nowhere did I expect any, especially based on almost complete lack of knowledge about the actual system configuration.

2. Flagged. This is the first time I've seen such an attack on HN. And you can imagine I have no interest in replying after this.

[SolarNet]

You were asking to be provided tech support here:

> Which of these packages is proprietary? I was doing this in VirtualBox without guest additions installed, and while I used to boot this installation on an NVIDIA system, I don't believe I had any NVIDIA-specific packages on it. Let me know the proprietary package name(s) you think I had and I'll search to see if I had any of them installed.

(Also, how would you do that if it was already wiped? Edit 2: yea.... because as not tech support I have read everything you have posted on your problem and am aware you have backups)

You were acting pretty entitled to this other person's help here:

> What "it" are you even talking about? I didn't "choose to ignore" anything. I Marked all Upgrades, clicked Apply, rebooted when it was finished, went to see if there were any more upgrades (there were some), tried to mark & apply them, and was greeted with this error. Apt/Synaptic got me into this broken state and couldn't get me out of it. I don't know what story you're reading, but it doesn't seem to be what I've been writing. There was nothing for me to ignore. The error wasn't something I ignored; it was the problem.

Edit: Oh and that's a perfectly civil response to you continuing to tell people who know how these systems actually work (which does not include you) that they are incapable of understanding what you are writing and implying that they are somehow delusional.

[mehrdadn]

I'll reply to this because you posted it after I was finished editing my reply above, but as I said there, I have no interest in replying to your profanity beyond this:

>> You were asking to be provided tech support here:

> Which of these packages is proprietary? [...] Let me know the proprietary package name(s) you think I had and I'll search to see if I had any of them installed.

I was fact-checking your (unsolicited) diagnosis, which you had already provided despite my lack of request for any kind of support. You made a claim seemingly out of the blue that caught me off-guard (it seemed unfounded and I had neither requested support nor a diagnosis), and in response I said if you wanted to check your facts I would provide you with information to confirm or disprove your (again: unsolicited) diagnosis. I thought maybe you would be interested in seeing whether you are correct. Of course I won't anymore, after your profane verbal abuse.

> (Also, how would you do that if it was already wiped?)

Because as I said multiple times since the beginning, I had a backup from before the update, which I ended up restoring to. Apparently you are not reading?

[SolarNet]

> I was fact-checking your (unsolicited) diagnosis, which you had already provided despite my lack of request for any kind of support.

Yes, I posted a general response to the class of problems that your anecdotal story appeared to apply to. In an informal discussion of anecdotal evidence, what sort of fact checking do you seriously think could be performed? It's basically impossible. You are trying to set an impossible bar for anyone to comment on anything you say.

> I said if you wanted to check your facts I would provide you with information to confirm or disprove you

That's... not how any of this could possibly ever work. You want me to perform research so that you can tell me whether I got it right or not? My original response stands regardless of if it effects your system: proprietary code is often a problem for package managers.

But further more, as the one holding the anecdotal (and physical) evidence, the onus is on you to agree or disagree with facts using it. Your request for me to do original research specific to your problem is at it's most charitable a tech support style question (even if phrased along the lines "what technical knowledge do I need to prove you wrong?"). Because if it were a request for evidence in a discussion it would be an unreasonable request positioned to stifle all disagreement with you by placing unnecessarily large (e.g. ridiculous) burdens on anyone who comments (to which my response would be much stronger).

If alternatively you had said "I doubt that because I never installed NVIDIA code on the system." or nothing at all. I wouldn't have cared or responded.

[throwanem]

Why did it mean so much to you? What made this particular expenditure of all that effort worthwhile?

[qznc]

I side with dataflow here. It would have been a "perfectly civil response" without the last paragraph, especially the "Fuck off". Likewise, in your last paragraph above you label him "incapable of understanding" and "delusional". That is not "perfectly civil".

[SolarNet]

No I said he implied that about other people. When he said they weren't reading what he was saying and were instead talking about some other story. If a person wrote a response exactly about his scenario, then saying what he did in response would imply that he thought that person was delusional. Which is what happened. I quoted it.

That was the point I gave up on him being an honest participant.

[talmand]

That's okay, I'm sure many of us gave up on your side of the discussion as well.