Dear Matthew,
I realise that people are trying to help, but I'd also like to
suggest that unless people are familiar with a platform, they hold
back on giving advice about it.
Trying to help was my intention and you're right that a MAC OSX expert
could have given better advice. So I'll refrain from talking about Mac OSX
from now, since there are experts available , which is a good thing 
I've been using a Mac at home and Linux in on a PC at work.
The reason for buying a Mac in the first place was that it claims
to be so simple. However, when I bought a new computer four years
later, it was not a Mac.
The reason for this was the fact that I could not get hold
of any usable reference or a competent seller to turn me really
productive on this platform.
I am using Linux in parallel to Cygwin on Windows. That latter
platform also sometimes has unexpected behaviour.
So just at the beginning of May, I ran into a problem that
seemed to be in relation with some extension library of Ruby
and I posted about it. The post was special enough to
reduce the amount of self-assessed experts to 0.
I did not get any response, and I was stuck for ten days.
Then, I produced some other error, got an advice, which didn't
fit 100 percent, either, but I learnt enough from it to solve the
problem.
So there is a danger from not getting good responses, but also
one from not getting any responses at all to a question one has.
Maybe a little critical distance from what other people tell you
can help to solve the problem.
Best regards,
Axel
My reasoning for this request is this: not-quite-right advice is
actually a fair bit more dangerous than flat-out wrong advice for
novice users (who are the kind of users who need and ask for advice).
Wrong advice is obviously wrong, it gets tried and discarded right away.
Not-quite-wrong advice costs people a lot of time and effort before
they realise that they've been led down the garden path, or can lead
people into some bad practices and habits.
matthew smillie.
). Still, in general, I would suggest making one's advice portable. If the receiver of the advice doesn't understand your vague advice, since you haven't given them any specific instructions its harder for them to do the wrong thing without asking more questions which will hopefully clear up the situation. I guess what I'm saying is the what is more important than the how. I realize "how" is usually what people are asking but you can tell someone how by telling them what as I hope I've demonstrated.