[to richard, top-posted deliberately so that the chances are high that
he will read it] - richard, apologies, i appreciate you are using
gmail which provides a nice clean way to encourage people to top-post,
but in case you have never encountered the reasons why it is bad, may
i suggest you read these:

http://linux.sgms-centre.com/misc/netiquette.php#toppost
http://www.idallen.com/topposting.html

there is a very funny joke as well which explains why it is bad:

    A: Because we read from top to bottom, left to right.
    Q: Why should I start my reply below the quoted text?

    A: Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text.
    Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing?

    A: The lost context.
    Q: What makes top-posted replies harder to read than bottom-posted?

    A: Yes.
    Q: Should I trim down the quoted part of an email to which I'm replying?

so. joke no 3 applies to what you have written.... let's proceed with
another round of additional work...



On Sat, Feb 14, 2015 at 3:56 PM, Richard <richard.holt@???> wrote:

> MX-14, PCLOS, MINT-LTS, Gobo

i'm sorry, but top-posting to a large message containing several
points and paragraphs without cutting any of the context makes it
impossible for me to understand the relevance of what you are saying.
if i _were_ to attempt to understand the relevance, you have made it
extremely difficult and time-consuming.

perhaps you might kindly - with a second message - firstly apologise
for taking up my time (and everyone else's) in having to ask you what
you meant, given that you didn't follow standard communications
guidelines that have been established practice for over 3 decades -
and secondly provide an explanation as to the relevance of the list of
what i assume to be the names of GNU/Linux OSes.

thanks richard.

l.