Ideally, a Unix program is silent. Only when a program fails for some reason, it must fail spectacularly, providing the user with detailed, helpful error messages. PFA, topyli, riotkittie, and gord all agree.

sane errors and pie

One of the strong points of using free systems such as Linux and Ubuntu in particular is the community support. When you have a bug to report, or a question to ask, you don’t have to call Microsoft and hope somebody will care. We care! This was demonstrated on #ubuntu-offtopic today. DrNick1 asked a question, topyli and NickGarvey helped immediately.

irc support