A Suggestion: A Groklaw Documentation Project
by vegard
April 16 2004
I don't think it's necessarily a good idea that groklaw tries to duplicate the
effort of The Linux Documentation project. Why don't the people interested in
writing documentation check out www.tldp.org?
07:25 AM EDT
How to find anything there?
by wgabi
April 16 2004
I think the Documentation on that side is pretty good
BUT
How can do you find anything there???
(Don't try to explain it to me, I can find it)
There is no index which makes it easy to find the topics a normal user is
looking for.
If I don't know where to look I am stuck right there and as a user I don't feel
like looking forever until I can find the right document.
07:41 AM EDT
How to find anything there?
by PJ
April 16 2004
That is it exactly. There is lots of documentation, but you don't know what
fits you in your problem. It's just too hard to find what you need.
I'm not suggesting covering every single thing, but there needs to be stuff on
what to do if X happens. If we write it, others can make it pop up at the right
place.
11:19 AM EDT
As long as it is a totally separate project then great
April 16 2004
lets not dilute the sco argument!
Personally PJ, I think a patent reform weblog would be more up your street.
But I suppose it's what you're interested in that counts.
07:48 AM EDT
As long as it is a totally separate project then great
by PJ
April 16 2004
Yes, it would be separate. Groklaw will always be what it is, but it can add.
We will be adding patents. Dan Ravicher is going to start covering patents for
us soon.
11:23 AM EDT
A Suggestion: A Groklaw Documentation Project
by PJ
April 16 2004
You are right on target as far as understanding my thought. The interview
yesterday with the MS guy started me thinking. MS spins that theirs is easier.
And in terms of help for the clueless, it is. I just see a chance to make that
no longer the case, by helping new users make the transition. After they are
in the water and swimming along, they can find and use the LDP and they'll
be ready for it.
11:21 AM EDT
A Suggestion: A Groklaw Documentation Project
by Peter H. Salus
09:30 AM EDT
I've just read all the comments (thusfar). I perceive
two problems. The first is a general confusion of
"documentation" and "instruction." The second is the
concentration on TLDP (which I have used) to the exclusion
of the GNU docs.
I consider the first of these by far the more important.
I use the man pages; I like using man (and info). My wife
hates them. She finds lines like
cat [-benstuv] [file ...]
impenetrable.
I generally recommend O'Reilly's UNIX in a Nutshell and/or
LINUX in a Nutshell to (relatively) new users. But neither
of them is really designed for the M$ user who wants to
move on. For such folks, Marcel Gagne's Moving to Linux
(Addison Wesley), may be the best book available.
But, PJ is right: TLDP and GNUdocs, man and info do not
really help the beginner or the intermediate user.
And as an old guy, I'll accept part of the blame.
Peter
---
Peter H. Salus
09:30 AM EDT
An answer :
April 16 2004
learn how to RTFM and there is already tldp.org
If you really want handholding for every simple thing, go back to windows
07:57 AM EDT
An answer ?
April 16 2004
What you gave was a response. It was not an answer.
The question was "How do you help a newbie start to get to grips with
Linux".
Reading the manual is in some cases counter productive. For example the
newbie's problem might have been caused by their inexperience, and the manual
writer, like yourself, can not remember a time when they made silly mistakes.
Because of this blind spot basic things, like is the modem connected to the
phone line, are left out.
OT aside. PJ, do you really think that SCOG is this close to being finished
with?
08:15 AM EDT
An answer ?
by PJ
April 16 2004
No relationship between SCO and this suggestion. My overview is: how can Groklaw help things work out well? I see that Ballmer was (falsely, as it turned out) chuckling about problems in Munich and the Taylor guy was saying ease of use for the clueless is where they shine, and I see these figures of so many switching, and I remember when I first switched... it was not easy at first. So I thought: how to solve this problem so we don't give Ballmer reason to chuckle and gloat? I decided what's needed by remembering what I used to wish for. I knew about LDP and I had the manuals. It was too hard. If the answer someone gives is, go back to Windows, they are speaking to me. Would that suggestion have been useful to the community if I had done so?No. To advance GNU/Linux now we need handholding. A lot of the work is done, but not all. Making it accessible to those who are not technically adept is essential. I know if we all sat down with friends and relatives and noted their issues as they try to use the software, it would be an invaluable addition. Manuals and info pages are written from those with strengths as they try to imagine what the new user would need to know. Instead, I am suggesting a kind of scientific research project, looking at what new users actually do wrong and *then* writing up what they need when that problem comes up.
Kind of like the usability studies that Apple did when they were trying to figure out design issues.
11:43 AM EDT
Commercial Distribution Desk Top Failure - [Comple Posting]
April 16 2004
I am glad you say Mandrake is currently the easiest
distribution to install and use as I have Mandrake on this
laptop and as far as I can ascertain the people putting
together the Mandrake distribution simply DO NOT get it
just as a majority of Linux programmers assembling
COMMERCIAL distributions simply DO NOT get it. Techies who
write their own code, assemble their own distribution, and
utilize programs directly downloads off the inter net are
way more technical competant than the average individual
buying a commercial distribution and leaving such more
technical items to those tho have a higher degree of
technical expertise. And! That is what the COMMERCIAL
DISTRIBUTIONS do not get.
I will give a few examples of what I am talking about.
This is a laptop. One may connect to the inter net by
either Wi-Fi [built in}, DSL, dial up, or mobile telephone
depending on which one chooses and one can change from one
to the other by simply making the appropriate connection
in MS Windows. In Mandrake one can connect by either DSL
or dial-up but in order to switch one has to reinstall or
reconfigure the whole operating system by use of the
installation disks. One should be able to turn any one
Wi-Fi, DSL, or dial-[sorry no mobile phone available] in
root configuration but it does not work. Once in the Red
Hat 5.x days there was a nice program that allowed manual
control of inter net connections call UUNET. Now since
this has been reported to Mandrake by myself since 8.2 and
currently exist in 10.0
A couple of weeks back I updated one Mandrake system from
9.1 to 9.2.
The first thing I noted was that Mandrake 9.2 does not
come with Midnight Commander. Not only that upgrading
removed the Midnight Commander from KTerm. Now for most
usage there are a number of other virtual equivalents but
KTerm's one very nice feature that running Midnight
Commander [fortunately MC remained from 9.1] from the
command line. It was easer for us non techies to log in
and use a root Midnight Commander.
Along with the loss of access to Might Night Commander
Mandrake 9.2 saw fit to remove my time scheduling program
from from the desktop. In fact a review of the programs in
the Mandrake distribution shows that it was not includes.
Other major Desk Top issues in Mandrake 9.2: Where did the
Thesaurus disappear to in Open Office? Why do I have such
a bitch of a time printing? Yes I can get the printer to
work after I have expend half a dozen print jobs getting
it set up correctly but print the first time ? what a
joke. The issues with cut and pat I will not go into but
suffice it to say some times I can cut and past from to
Open Office to and from Konqueror and some times I can not
doing precisely the same things.
The issue I am addressing is not as simple as a few left
out programs in a sloppy composed trowed together
distribution it is really much much deeper and is a
continuation of one of the two major issue that drove
Mandrake into bankruptcy. The issue that I am referring to
is the relation between the Network people and the Desk
Top people. If you are a Desk Top person you have NO
interest in Apache. Not only that you have NO idea of what
it is used for, why anyone would want it, and are
completely bewildered of why anyone would think that it is
important. Desk Top people have interest in word
processors, time trackers, accounting programs, graphics
programs [AutoCAD type; Gimp is a bitch as a replacement
for AutoCad], presentation programs [Yes Open Office has a
presentation program but have you ever tried to add an
external monitor to Mandrake ? maybe the techies can but
NO Desk Top user could], in short there are very few
programs included with the major distributions that are up
to the quality of MS Desk Top programs and the situation
does not appear to be getting better.
Beside the lack or relevance to Desk Top users the other
major issue with Mandrake is lack of quality. I do not
know the number of times that I have had to make major
surgery to Desk Top programs in Mandrake to make them rum
after installing or updating Mandrake. An example, upgrade
from Mandrake 9.1 to Mandrake 9.2 CD-Roaster worked in 9.1
before the upgrade; it does not work after the upgrade.
Lets face it folks there are numerous groups of people
here with numerous interest. Some of us have NO interest
in compiling and assembling distributions others do. But!
For those who do they should keep in mind that 90+% of
computers run on MS Windows precisely because most people
DO NOT. So rant and revel how easy Mandrake ans SuSE are.
The simple fact is that for a major of users both are very
difficult precisely because of the programs that are
included with the distribution on because of the broken
components.
09:00 AM EDT
Commercial Distribution Desk Top Failure - [Comple Posting]
by PJ
April 17 2004
Thank you for your comment, and I point to it as exhibit A. This is in no way meant to make fun of your comment, which was really valuable. But there is a way to switch back and forth between DSL and dialup. I do it in Mandrake all the time. You don't have to reinstall.See, this is what I mean? Here's a person trying to do Mandrake and hitting a wall and no way to get it fixed without deep diving, as Darl would say. Something like this is so easy to explain and we could do snapshots of the page showing how. There really is a need for this. This person knows there's lots of info out there, but he still reached an erroneous conclusion. I know we can help with issues like this and the end result will be more happy Linux users.
05:23 PM EDT
Use the source! (I know, I know...)
by fb
April 16 2004
I know it doesn't help at all, to tell a confused newbie to look at source to solve a problem. But it does highlight one of the things that (historically) has set Open Source apart.
Good documentation is really hard to write and maintain. You get used to the idea that it will never be completely adequate.
If you're a Unix or Linux hacker, you learn quickly that the best way to answer the question, "What does this sucker think it's doing?" is to study the source. The source is the best documentation around. Most of the competent programmers you meet will have learned jointly how to use their systems effectively, and how to compose good applications, by studying the classic examples found on their Unix or Linux systems. Having source to look at has been a key piece in helping users become self-sufficient, even if we're talking about expert users here. Even if you never patch a line of code it's critical to have source around simply for study.
Again, this doesn't help a novice user much, or anybody who's just looking for a band-aid to get out of a momentary jam and get on to something more pressing. But it does suggest that, ultimately, the best documentation is education, and being able to compress that into a book or a webpage is a high and rare art.
09:00 AM EDT
Use the source! (I know, I know...)
April 16 2004
Well, good documentation is needed for the "newbies" but I'd like to
see it as an optional part of Linux rather than an integral part.
Yea, it will definitely help in fixing things easily but it will also rob you of
the adventure you can have in finding & fixing the problems by self.
Extremely user-friendly documentation are annoyance to experienced users. I dont
want to make Linux so user-friendly that it would make people lazy and dumb as
Microsoft does. Frankly, its that sense of adventure and trouble-shooting skills
what I like so much about Linux.
(sorry for my poor english)
nin0
10:30 AM EDT
Use the source! (I know, I know...)
by PJ
April 17 2004
There is no need to choose one or the other. We can all use GNU/Linux to
the degree we can. A newbie Grokdoc would get the boat launched. After
that, they can learn to paddle on their own, which I agree is the fun part, but
you can't paddle until the boat is in the water.
05:26 PM EDT
"101 things to do with a dead Linux box"
by darkonc
April 16 2004
This, I think would be the 'dead tree project' -- what to do if your Linux box won't boot (or won't boot into X). I'm thinking that (if anything) this is also a project that should be split up by distribution (there might be a good deal of overlap to take advantage of, but things like this are where the distributions really diverge.Hmm.. geekdoc.org is available.
oh: By the way, I registered 'linuxbeachhead.com' a long time ago for things like this... It still hasn't been put to good use, so if you have a thought, email me.
---
Powerful, committed communication. Touching the jewel within each person and bringing
it to life..
09:04 AM EDT
"101 things to do with a dead Linux box"
by PJ
April 17 2004
Yes! This happened to me and it took me hours and hours to figure it out.
Now I know, once and for all time. On distros, Mandrake sets up security in
such a way that sometimes things happen you didn't expect. Like root can't
log in gui-style, and if you are set up to gui the login, you can't log in as
root.
That took hours for me to figure out too. There is no reason we can't do a
multi-distro approach to these commons issues.
On the name, I bought grokdoc.org, net, com and I'll use that. Thanks
though.
05:31 PM EDT
Grokdoc - a multi-stage approach
April 16 2004
Pam, I agree with the need, and like others, am a bit concerned that it could
dilute efforts here. In addition, as you've seen already, there are a number of
doc projects and sources out there - they are just (for the most part) hard to
find, hard to use, and not linked or properly related.
My suggestion is to do things like this in a multi-stage manner. First, just as
the left pane has "Home", "Quote DB", "Legal
Links", etc., we need something new:
Grok Links
In there, one could find legal links, web links (like SCO financials), etc., as
well as links to Grok Projects: GrokPat (Patent Reform), and GrokDoc (this
documentation project). Threads inside of those mini-blogs would be separate,
but easily located.
GrokDoc could start with a header page, with links to all of the projects that
have been identified, and a "starter help" page that describes
non-link items such as man and info pages. New additions could be added as
simple links. Projects could be encouraged to send their help links to this
common site (and, as you noted, there is no "one-stop shopping" point
for Linux documentation, not even tldp).
This is where the second stage comes in: once the list of links and sources are
assembled, the next stage is to unify those information sources. Perhaps a
search front-end, which can simplify the data sharing, or provide clickable
links to a number of different sites. Enter "modem" for example, and
you might get links to (fictitious): "Linux Modem Project",
"WinModem on Linux", "Idiots Guide to Modem Setup", etc.
What would be nice is if those sites could provide a short explanation for their
main links, which could show up in a different pane of the helper app. The
influence of a site like GrokDoc could help push that. Click once on on
"Idiots Guide", for example, and you might see something like:
"Helps you setup and use many common types of modems, all the way from
checking the wiring at the wall, to verifying a connection to your ISP".
Thus, with a few top-level links, and a small search engine, all of the existing
docs instantly get easier to use. There could even be a launcher for man/info
pages, web browser, etc. Perhaps a rating system, such as the mechanism that
Google uses to rate the quality of page hits, could be used to sort items in
sub-groups. Nesting could be to many different levels.
Maybe a distro or two would start to put a link to GrokHome or GrokDoc on their
default browser buttons - a great way to help newbies (and those of us who end
up looking like them from time to time as we encounter something we haven't seen
before). I don't suggest a link to Groklaw, by the way: I think this site is
going to change soon, when the SCO thieves are routed out and brought to
justice.
Eventually, somebody could gather the sources into one super doc project, with
better maintenance, support, readability, and more. But if not, this approach
would still make things far more accessible, and I think that is what you (and
others) need today and for the near term.
This would extend and enhance Groklaw, provide a new structure of help and
collaboration, and further improve the community efforts. Groklaw has become a
magnet (for those in favor of F/OSS, and those who oppose us); time to let the
magnetic field spread a bit, and see what kind of iron filings it attracts, and
what kind of interesting patterns it might create. You've done a great job with
this. Please keep the spotlight on SCO a while longer. But GrokDoc (Dok?) and
GrokPat? YOU BET!
11:06 AM EDT
Grokdoc - a multi-stage approach
by PJ
April 17 2004
This is a wonderful suggestion. I will do this, the Groklinks idea. I think
Groklaw should keep patents under its roof, though, because it's part of the
legal coverage. But Grokdoc will be linked to but separate.
09:16 AM EDT
A Suggestion: A Groklaw Documentation Project
by Hop
April 16 2004
While I like the idea, I see Groklaw as a place to get information on the legal
battles shaping the software industry. While it's pretty much focused on SCO at
the moment, I'd like to see this expanded to cover other software legal issues
and cover both sides (as long as people can keep it civil and stick to facts).
How about just adding links to these other sites? That would be helpful and not
detract from the main focus of Groklaw.
11:07 AM EDT
A Suggestion: A Groklaw Documentation Project
by PJ
09:16 AM EDT
Don't worry. Groklaw's focus is unchanged. The Grokdoc project will be an
offshoot and not lodged here.
09:16 AM EDT
A Suggestion: A Groklaw Documentation Project
by jypgrok
April 16 2004
A newbie in Linuxland without a travel guide.
I am a newbie to the workings of computers (apart from using one) and I
installed SuSE 9 Pro on my machine (Windows) about a month ago wanting to
contribute to the quest of freedom and out of disgust with Microsoft. I eagerly
want to learn. I have heavily invested in books and I am working a lot on it.
But it is not easy and even the very simple things are not evident. No one is
born with he meaning of "symbols" like bin, usr, etc, PGP, sbin, and
it is difficult to know where to put the files after downloading a program such
as Firefox in order for it to work. And in spite of having worked on the problem
a lot and checked everything I could, I still have no sound from my CD
"device" and no clue. One has to be highly motivated to stick to
Linux. So, as a newbie, I would greatly appreciate any simple documentation
like, for instance, a glossary of Linux terms.
11:15 AM EDT
A Suggestion: A Groklaw Documentation Project
by PJ
April 17 2004
I would be interested in hearing from you on whether you used the manuals
that come with SuSE and whether they helped and if not, why not. Please
email me, if you have a minute. The little yellow envelope on the left will
enable you to reach me. Thanks.
09:14 AM EDT
A Suggestion: A Groklaw Documentation Project
by chrism
April 16 2004
A problem I have with people who are too lazy to RTFM is their rather decided lack of respect for my time. I was not put here on this earth to be a problem solver for the world-at-large. Please show me a good-faith attempt to research your problem.I think you have a valid point, although I think your terminology is off.Oh, you're a lazy git and you want the answers to your quesions on a silver platter? ok, that's honest, here's my rate card.
I don't think the term "lazy" is really appropriate. I think "uninterested" is much better.
We all have things we are interested in and have patience for and things we don't. I really like learning about computers. I am not interested in learning about home furances and how they work. No matter how well you wrote down a theory of operations for my home furnace, I am not going to read it and maintain my own furnace. Instead, I pay a for a service contract so that when something breaks, someone who is interested in how furnaces work comes to my house and fixes it for me. So I think your "rate card" point is a valid one.
Anyway, I don't consider myself lazy about furnaces. Just uninterested.
Now, back to the problem of documentation. I think the documentation writer has a right to assume some interest and patience on the part of the reader. But not an infinite amount. I think we need more documentation that proceeds by examples of how to do non-trivial, interesting things. The examples should start out as small as possible and get larger.
I am involved in the GNU java compiler mailing list. There has been a lot of discussion about Richard Stallman's recent piece on java. We have been discussing how to make it easier for developers that are using Sun's JDK for linux (Blackdown) to switch to gcj. I have been preparing to do this myself for some months. It turns out a lot of developers are blocked by not knowing how to write a Makefile that allows them to use gcj the way they are accustomed to using Sun's JDK.
I have written a Makefile to do just that. I will be posting it shortly on the gcj mailing list if anyone is interested. I will be attempting to live up to what I am writing here about how to write documentation. Small, concrete examples that let the reader do something quickly without learning an elaborate theory of operations first.
Chris Marshall
11:27 AM EDT
A Suggestion: A Groklaw Documentation Project
by darthaggie
April 16 2004
I think you have a valid point, although I think your terminology is off.I don't think the term "lazy" is really appropriate. I think "uninterested" is much better.
I'll allow that my terminology is imprecise. There are the lazy who are interested but don't want to work at it. The uninterested won't be asking a whole lot of questions. If it's important for their problem to be solved, they'll shell out the bucks and get someone to do it. Or become interested, and solve it themselves.
In either case, writing volumes of documentation, even really good documentation, would be pointless. What they both want is something like UserLinux - a lot less choice, a lot less options, and a lot more things pre-configured in a set way.
Now, back to the problem of documentation. I think the documentation writer has a right to assume some interest and patience on the part of the reader. But not an infinite amount. I think we need more documentation that proceeds by examples of how to do non-trivial, interesting things. The examples should start out as small as possible and get larger.
Sounds like an opportunity for some good tech writer to write a book.
In fact, if you really want to get more, better, and useful documentation, you'll need to find interested tech writers to do the heavy lifting. That's what is needed: people who know how to write tech documents *and* aren't so close to the subject matter that they grok it so well that they leave elements that are vital to a beginner's understanding.
There's an old cliche of All problems are difficult, until you solve them, then they become trivial. Remember to document the trivial parts!
05:39 PM EDT
How would you license it?
April 16 2004
I note that you are gung ho for the GPL, but don't think so much of the GNU Free
Documentation License, choosing to use a non-commercial Creative Commons license
for your own work.
11:52 AM EDT
How would you license it?
by PJ
April 17 2004
The license for this site is not necessarily the same as what the Grokdoc
would be. There are legal reasons differentiating the two projects.
09:07 AM EDT
Questions Database
April 16 2004
Just an idea for a questions database... The following steps are independent
tasks and can be done at different times by different people on a voluntary
basis:
Step 1. You have a question. As a public service, you write down your question
and submit it to a questions database. You do this primarily to build the
questions database, not just to get an answer to your question.
Step 2. The question is processed by a software program that attempts to
categorize it, find appropriate keywords, and compare for similarity to other
questions in the database.
Step 3. A human reviews and edits the results, and adds a new entry to the
questions database.
There is another logically separate database which holds items of knowledge.
Step 4. People can link entries in the questions database to answers in the
knowledge database. Also, answers can be linked back to questions, questions
linked to other related questions and answers linked to other related answers.
The reason to have a separate questions database is so that you can browse it to
find a question that is similar to your own question. Then you can follow the
links to answers. I think this is more efficient than trying to find an answer
directly in a knowledge database.
12:56 PM EDT
Questions Database
by PJ
April 17 2004
Brilliant suggestion. I'll definitely implement.
09:03 AM EDT
Reality Check
by nonpartisan
April 16 2004
Okay, time for a bit of a reality check here.
[ soapbox ]
Fact: Windows isn't Linux. And Linux isn't Windows.
Fact: Linux isn't easy for the new person.
Fact: Windows isn't either.
Computers are complex pieces of electronics. Sometimes it's amazing that they
even work in the first place.
There is a myth that has developed that says everything you want to do with a
computer must be easy. One could probably even extend that to say the myth says
it must be intuitive. I don't believe either.
In order to use a computer, you must have a basic knowledge of how the operating
system works. In Linux, using a command line, you must know that you receive a
text prompt. At this prompt, you type in commands. These commands must be
typed in a certain format. (There is some flexibility, depending on how
environment variables and other settings are configured.) When using the X
Window System or Microsoft Windows, generally you use a mouse to point to
buttons or menus or other graphic controls in order to make the computer react.
But you must know that this is how to interact with the operating system. Once
you get the basics down, you can build from there. You can start learning how
to do things, including applications. And therein lies the problem.
I'm used to Microsoft Word. It's what we use at work. I still use it at home
(Windows 2000 connecting to my Linux firewall and Samba server). At work, I
just recently had to use Adobe Framemaker to create files in a format particular
to one of our major applicatons.
I got lost in Framemaker. In my view, it was not intuitive. Why? Because it
wasn't what I was used to using. If all other programs were designed with
interfaces like Framemaker, I would've known exactly where to go to.
But it wasn't, so I didn't. I had to use help files -- that is, read the
documentation.
I have a pet theory. Suppose you sit two people down, each at a computer. One
has Microsoft Windows on it. The other has Linux on it. The Microsoft Windows
system runs Microsoft Word. The Linux system runs something text-based, but
equally capable as Word. Neither of them have used their respective word
processors. Give them both a copy of the same 20 page document. Ask both of
them to re-create it using the tools at their disposal. This document will have
many pages of straight text, but it will need to include a table or two, some
text effects (bold, italics, font size changes), and a few images (images
provided in files). Nothing that would really be considered exotic, given
today's documents.
My theory says that, all things being equal (including available documentation),
they will both finish up at about the same time.
Why? Because the Windows user will probably figure out basic things, such as
font changes, quickly. However, I think, for more advanced functions, the
Windows user really ends up spending as much time reading documentation as the
Linux user. They just don't know it because it's in the form of help files and
"Word for Dummies" books. There's nothing inherently wrong with that.
It's just that it's a fallacy that Windows is so much simpler to use. The
Linux user may not be able to start typing right away, and may need to learn
more about how the word processor works. But by the time they're done reading,
they will know how to do what they need to do, and they'll be able to just do
it. The Windows user will do some work, stop, read how to accomplish something,
do some more work, stop, read more, etc.
But since Windows is "so much easier to use," they won't consider the
time they've needed to spend reading documentation. So when you tell them to
read the documentation, they'll say "but you don't need to read the
documentation to use Windows."
Using a computer is like learning to drive a car. You can't just sit in the
driver's seat and expect to be able to cruise around safely on the roads. You
need to learn the interface. You also need to learn what makes a car run. You
may not need to know how a combustion engine works, but you need to know that it
needs oil. It needs gas. As with a car, you need to know how the operating
system's interface works. You also need to know something about what goes on
under the computer's hood. You don't necessarily need to have detailed
knowledge, but unless you're going to be calling tech support every time the
computer burps or sighs, you need to have some understanding of what's going
on.
Once we can eliminate the fallacy, then people will realize that Linux is not
nearly as hard as they make it out to be.
[ end soapbox ]
01:36 PM EDT
There is no technical reason that Linux should not be easier t use than Windows / Mac
by jaydee
April 17 2004
If a user finds something is difficult then either the interface is at fault
or
it has not been explained clearly.
EG. ipchains
this is a great piece of software. But with a lousy interface. I have seen a
graphical interface to it where you can draw lines between interfaces to define
what is and is not allowed. Dead easy. You just need to know about protocols and
stuff, Add in a few basic set ups and you have a fire wall that can be used by
your granny.
06:10 AM EDT
There is no technical reason that Linux should not be easier t use than Windows / Mac
by PJ
April 17 2004
Firewalls is the first topic I'd like to cover, after the Knoppix thing, along
with
Tripwire, so new users aren't 0wned immediately.
08:57 AM EDT
A Suggestion: A Groklaw Documentation Project
April 16 2004
What ever is decided , just make sure that the contents are available in an ISO
cd format , so we could have the database/etc available for browsing at will and
without having to be connected to the Internet. You can have all the links you
want inside the database, also would be great the have the possibility to have
it in printed form a PDF file to keep the same format/fonts as the one that we
are reading in the screen.
The .iso could be updated every X month(s) or when a new release of
Linux/kernel/distro is out.
Also not to replicate the efforts, whats already available, there should be
links to online/printed materials( books/web sites/etc..) and if possible at
least a breif overview of each subject in the case of printed materials. I
understand that we may need to pay for the books, but if we don't know that the
book exist it doesn't help. Also if there is a mention about the book, at least
have a brief overview of each chapter so we could see if it is what we are
really looking for, so we don't go out to buy it for after to have it in the
shelve picking up dust, because it was not what we realy wanted/needed.
Just my 2 cents ( 0.02$)
A new Linux user, who's technical enough to do multiple system integrations from
all the major players.
02:44 PM EDT
A Suggestion: A Groklaw Documentation Project
by PJ
April 17 2004
Excellent suggestions. CD and book and website... makes sense.
08:49 AM EDT
Copyright 2004 http://www.groklaw.net/