This is in response to http://www.infodrom.org/~joey/log/?200609102259.

The question arises: How will people learn about GNU and Linux once everything starts working smoothly?

I can certainly vouch for the fact that many of the things I learnt about computers, I learnt because the computer was not doing things the way I wanted it to.

From Personal Experience

There are two types of mathematics books.

There are those where the author has taken great pains to construct the most illuminating exercises for the student to solve at the end of each chapter.

And then there are the books where there are mistakes in the text. The exercise is to find the mistakes and correct them.

I have learnt more from the latter than the former