This will turn ugly rather quickly, I'd wager

[drquuxum.livejournal.com]

I sent a help request to a large research institution, stating that their Grants Management System for Linux fails to run after installation.

A snippet of my message, edited to remove personal information:
I have installed [name of application] for Dr. [astrophysicist]'s Fedora Core 3 Linux workstation... [message continues about the nature of the error]

The reply?
You don't say what version of Linux that she is running.

So I either have gotten someone on a 2nd grade reading level, or someone who claims their application supports Red Hat Linux but has never heard of Fedora. It took all of my professionalism not to reply back "Try reading the original message again, dumbass."

[edit] Next reply: Okay...I thought that was the model. I see a lot of Red Hat and Red Hat Enterprise, but this is the first Fedora Core 3.

Somehow I find it hard to believe that we're the only university that has machines running Fedora. Turns out though that the person who replied is pretty much a switchboard who can troubleshoot very basic problems. She sent my message along to the developers.

Comments

[justsomegurl.livejournal.com]

I've had similar situations with personal email. I wrote back saying something to the effect of "As you can see from my original e-mail..." then I copied the pertinent part of the orginal e-mail and put it in quotes. I hate repeating myself.

[compwizrd.livejournal.com]

i just reply back with the part they missed.

I've had to do this 4 or 5 times with particularly script-following people.

[jon787.livejournal.com]

Well technically you didn't say which version of Linux she was running, atleast not in the snippet you posted.

[teriwyn.livejournal.com]

Your icon makes me hungry...

[jon787.livejournal.com]

The nearest Arby's is directly across the largest freshwater lake in the world (by surface area) from me and in another country :(

[teriwyn.livejournal.com]

And here I thought I had it bad... I only have to go to the next county over to acheive Arby's goodness.

[zig-mover.livejournal.com]

I only have to go 10 minutes away, and I just realized I haven't had Arby's since I started eating meat again.. now I know what I'm getting for dinner tonight :)

[dysan27.livejournal.com]

Looking at a map, there's just this gap around where you must be.

Apparently Arby doesn't like you.

[jon787.livejournal.com]

Burger King moved left town 2 years ago. I think the nearest is 30 miles away.

[drquuxum.livejournal.com]

Point, but she didn't want to know the kernel version; that would've been irrelevant and probably confusing to her.

[jon787.livejournal.com]

I like that icon.

"There was supposed to be a kaboom, an earth shattering kaboom!"

[jjjiii]

I would have thought, "Fedora Core 3 is a distribution version, and they want the version of the Linux kernel I'm running."