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The Linux Documentation Project Turns 10
"Today, TLDP is one of the largest Internet projects, where a few hundred people have written several hundred documents, ranging from small manual pages to in-depth guides that span over a hundred pages. The documentation covers nearly all aspects of Linux and is freely distributed, like Open Source software itself. In fact, many Linux distributions include the complete TLDP collection with the installation, helping both newcomers and more experienced users.
TLDP is fully multi-lingual. People volunteer their time to help with tools, reviews, translation, publishing and updates. This all requires work, and a core group of a few dozen aid the authors through a series of mailing lists. In addition, TLDP is pleased to acknowledge support from numerous companies over the years, including Red Hat and IBM.
TLDP continues to grow, in numbers of documents, supported languages and also new services, to better help an ever-increasing audience. To achieve this, TLDP is always looking for new volunteers to join, ranging from authors to programmers, to reviewers.
For more information, please visit http://www.tldp.org and read the LDP FAQ."
...where it is. So here's a link.
Whilst this is obviously a monumental community feat, and I would like to offer my thanks to all those who have contributed over the years, I feel it is sadly lacking howtos for ablution and girlfriend. Oh, and a securing-windows one for Bill too. Happy Birthday LDP!
The RTFM expression turns 10 too!
now maybe it will stop wetting the bed.
ten years later..
:)
the gentoo forums..
probably the best place to find a fanatical how-to on anything..
by fanatics, for fanatics
(we are all a little fanatical here)
anime+manga together at last.. in real time.
Of course one must be willing to RTF-how-to.
So on this the 10th anniversary of the How-to, here is a little "up-yours-clippy" :)~
I remember using the early HOWTOs to compile my first Linux kernel (back in the days when your distro didn't come with a one-size-fits-all), setup my first PPP connection for my 14.4 Internet connection.
Many thanks to all those who have contributed over the years. The community is in your debt.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
Not all of us are amazingly inclined when it comes to batting around in Linux. I just revived an old machine and gave RedHat a try... with no local Linux guru, these things are all I have to go on. No idea what I would do without these people putting their hearts into the documentation effort.
Auto-reply to ACs: "Truly, you have a dizzying intellect."
Nice transcription. Shame about the punctuation.
Nice link... ... doofus
It was a type, correct link here
When anger rises, think of the consequences.
Confucius (551 BC - 479 BC)
The projects so good that publishers just publish HOWTO's verbatim ocassionally, for print.
Kinda embarrasing that I've not know about this site or had it come up in a google search. Hmm.
Bill, I thought I told you not to post when you are drunk!
as every teacher will tell you, the best way to learn about something is to teach it to someone else. so TLDP has promoted the ascension of a large community of users who know their shit, in addition to helping people like me who don't, necessarily.
therein lies a significant value of the project, I think.
It was a type, correct link here Thanks for the hot info dude! Now to investigate this strange 'red hat' to which you link..
Documentation is always necessary you insensitive clod!
...contains only howto's from the LDP. This way you can support the cause as well as having an offline copy of the howto's to browse. In a "paperless world" sometimes having a book is nice still.
Namaste
What we need is a user friendly "linux documentation" that uses X. It should allow complete customization of everything that is normally done at the command line. Man pages aren't near user friendly enough - they are way too technical. General help, examples, common options, FAQs, and advanced options for each topic would be ideal. Or, if the person doesn't like the command line, they could do it with the central linux configuration UI. It shouldn't be a limited subset specific to each distribution, it should be centralized. The LDP would be a good place for much of the help information, but more 'dummed down' versions would also be necessary.
--
The Zingler
for most people. ;)
Have a nice weekend.
Very useful indeed, unlike your link...
Here's another one: RedHat
"Hell hath no fury like a hippo with a machine gun."
Design idiot-proof software, and the world will design a better idiot.
Now I'm proud to run a machine that's over twice as fast, with three times the memory! And I still use Matt Walsh's writings to get by. Three Cheers and a virtual beer!
This is not my sandwich.
Now blow out your candles and update your howtos damnit!
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
Thank you LDP for your great service to the community. Where would RTFM be without you?
I feel old.
You know, I'd just be happy with documentation on par with the FreeBSD Handbook. Seriously. I picked up a copy years ago (BSD 4.4 I believe) and it covered just about everything you'd ever need to know to get started and was extremely well-written.
I've *never* found an equivalent to that book for Linux and it's a damn shame.
If you were me, you'd be good lookin'. - six string samurai
Ten years later, it is no exaggeration to say that the basic documentation is still missing. In particular the three "core" volumes "Linux User Guide", "Linux System Administrator Guide" and "Linux Network Administrator Guide" are really really outdated and/or incomplete. The HOWTOs are greate, but they are so narrowly-focused thay can hardly be called something like "Linux documentation". A good user guide for the total unix newbie is still missing. Too bad.
I'll bite, out of amusement that your poorly co-opted troll claims there are cheaper alternatives to Linux. :) How would that ever work? Does MS pay you to use Windows now?
"Neque enim lex est aequior ulla, quam necis artifices arte perire sua."
You can find help using Google Group Search!
or
Get some questions answered in "real-time" on IRC, connect to any Visit Freenode Server! and join channels like: #linuxhelp, #Gentoo, #xf86, #security, #Debian, #etc....etc...etc...
Patrick Doyle
I mod down every jackass who puts his moderation policy in his sig. Oh, wait a sec....
Stephen King is not dead, ...
Parent is a modified Mac Troll,
goatse.cx links should never be followed, use tinyurl links with care,
Read the full 'text of article' posts for Rob Malda references,
Profit!
what will be the next thing about Linux that turns 10?
The great philosopher dm brings you the best way to get help with Linux.
This post is free (as in cheese in a mousetrap).
probably the best place to find a fanatical how-to on anything..
...it's hosted off a cave in Afghanistan.
;).
And in fear of a horde of fanatics coming after me, IT WAS A JOKE
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
...and most of their docs are celebrating their 10th year anniversary since their last change/update.
Ok, so it's a slight exaggeration, but an enormous number of TLDP documents- mostly HOWTOs- are so horribly, embarrassingly out of date that they are completely, entirely, useless. Like the networking related howtos that cover 2.0 kernel features...
I cannot actually think of a single major HOWTO that I've actually found up-to-date enough to be useable on a linux distro released in the last 2 years.
Please help metamoderate.
>You know, I'd just be happy with documentation on par with the FreeBSD Handbook. Seriously. I picked up a copy years ago (BSD 4.4 >I believe) and it covered just about everything you'd ever need to know to get started and was extremely well-written.
Linux: The Complete Reference Paperback:
1257 pages ; Dimensions (in inches): 2.55 x 9.16 x 7.42
Publisher: McGraw-Hill Osborne Media; 4th edition (December 22, 2000)
ISBN: 0072129409
and
Linux Man : The Essential Man Pages for Linux
Paperback
Publisher: WorkGroup Solutions, Inc.; 2 edition (March 1997)
ASIN: 188817272X
The first one has all the How-to's in it and the second is all man pages, together you shouldn't really need much else in print.
Find it at your favorite bookstore or on online.
Damn, I'll bite - Honestly, there's something else the matter with that box - maybe you should check out the Linux Documentation Project for some help... and you may not want to brag about the fact that your XP box is so screwed up that it takes it 2 minutes to make a copy of a 17Mb file on the same disk! Come to think of it, sounds like I've had to clean up after the mess you've made 'freelancing' on some poor bastard's system...
All those docs are a great help when troubleshooting! That is, if people read them.
I am a filthy pirate.
has failed woefully. The docs are still as shitty
and useless as they ever have been. I might as well
go read the source.
- moomin
First of all, I'd like to debunk the idea that, "there was a general consensus that Unix in general, and Linux in particular, lacked good documentation." That's BS--Unix has had good and even definitive documentation for decades. Four feet of manuals (man pages, install guides, networking config, X programming, etc., etc., etc.) were considered absolutely essential material back in the day, and they were generally really good! Today we have docs.(vendor).com, as a pretty damned fine replacement. At no point in recent history has the Unix community suffered from a general shortage of good documentation.
Now the LDP has come a long way in the last ten years, and let me join with everyone here in saying, "Congratulations! Linux wouldn't have gotten anywhere near where it is without you."
That said, there are two fundamental weaknesses that stem from the nature of the LDP, and I'd like to see some way of modifying the project to address them as much as possible.
First of all is the lack of a formal review process. As I understand it, anyone can submit a doc, and it will by accepted if it meets basic criteria. (mostly proper SGML/Docbook formatting.)
There really needs to be a review process, similar to code review for proper software projects. (of course, a project should also have a documentation writer/maintainer, which would invalidate much of the LDP, but I digress...) I have seen HOWTOs which were unintelligible, incomplete, unmaintained, and wildly inaccurate. Without grammar and technical review, stuff like this just keeps popping up at random.
The second problem is something that the LDP cannot (and shouldn't have to) correct on its own. It's incomplete--it is not a complete repository of Linux documentation, by any stretch of the imagination. To be fair, it shouldn't have to be--software should come with documentation! Howtos and guides should be supplements to that documentation, not the only source for it. Unfortunately, freelance developers don't always see things that way.
Anyways, enough sour grapes. Happy Birthday LDP! Keep on going, and keep on gettting better.
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
The documentation is pretty poor. I think if Linux were a more organized and coherent community higher quality documentation would surface.
Until then, you can always use FreeBSD. The documentation requires you have a basic level of clue, however it's exceptionally nice documentation for the most part.
scott
While I've looked to LDP for Howto's and information about specific Linux setup issues, there's another entirely different reason I keep tabs on them:
They're interested in being able to automatically generate high quality documents in a variety of formats, including both LaTeX and HTML.I've been interested in authoring options using DocBook that would enable me to produce highly flexible document sources based on open standards that would be useful long into the future.
"Provided by the management for your protection."
Please explain all the many people in the world (corpations and individuals) that have managed to get it running? You telling me all these people have got the luck of the irish or do you just have the brains of a blonde polish pop-star? (sorry to all the blond polish orck stars).
It's unfortunate that the average user thinks he needs an interface that's SO intuitive that no reading is necessary. I'm not saying that a good GUI is a bad thing, quite the opposite; but it's unreasonable to expect to be able to sit down at a machine as incredibly complex as a computer, running software you're unfamiliar with, and just use it without taking the time to read any instructions first. A COMPUTER IS NOT AN APPLIANCE. And besides, don't most people at least skim over the manual that comes with a new appliance? Then why the aversion to reading software documentation?
The Linux Newbie Ask Question HowTo
Wrong way:
- How do I do <what you have a problem with> in Linux?
Answer:
- RTFM!!!
Right way:
- Linux sucks! Doing <what you have a problem with> is so easy in Windows, I'll switch back soon...
Answer:
- Don't switch! The solution to <what you have a problem with> is simple, just do this: <an elaborate, newbie-friendly answer>
Karma. Moderation. Is my
Linux has documentation??
[ehidle@fs-bm01 ehidle]$ ls -la file.junk
:)
-rw-r--r-- 1 ehidle users 18557771 Oct 31 15:30 file.junk
[ehidle@fs-bm01 ehidle]$ time cp file.junk file.junk.2
real 0m0.206s
user 0m0.000s
sys 0m0.210s
[ehidle@fs-bm01 ehidle]$
Of course, the write caching in my RAID controller helps a bit
I always figured that Man pages should have a URL reference to comments so that if you're stuck on something you can just read the modded up thread on "But I'm trying to do this with an NCC1701-H!" or "Does anyone have an example?"
Then if the URL is introduced in a standard fashion, a specialized man page reader could show the comments.
After five years or so, the author could then pick out the good questions and touch up the information.
Your GNU/Linux box must be badly misconfigured, I just copied a 30MB file in 0.36 seconds on a lower spec. box.
I know many will disagree, but I believe this is the best thing to happen to Linux since its beginning. It actually made Linux almost user-friendly. Well maybe not friendly, but at least not so user-hating. Thanks to the folks who worked on the LDP!
/* It's amazing the damage someone with a stunted sense of humor and mod points can do to your karma. */
That's because you are probably installing one of those candy-ass distros on new fancy-pants hardware. Why, just the other day a HOWTO helped me to install a PCMCIA network card on a P75 laptop.
Seriously, it did.
When HOWTOs refer to config files and the like, they do get outdated. I have actually been pretty surprised how relevant a HOWTO from 1997 has been. The problem is, the people who need the HOWTOs are the ones who don't know how to do something, and once you learn it, you don't think to update the HOWTO. I know I don't. Shame on me.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
Most people never even look at the manual for an appliance, other than to (maybe) put it in a drawer with all the other manuals they haven't read. That's part of the reason for all the warning stickers on things: to take the place of the manual.
"They redundantly repeated themselves over and over again incessantly without end ad infinitum" -- ibid.
I've been MS-free at home for two years now. I have my newbie girlfriend using a Gentoo/KDE box, she knows how to update it and burn audio CDs. I've got a file/print 'consolidator', a workstation, and a laptop running Linux, no windows partitions whatsoever.
I laugh at the 'I run Linux' guys at work, because they think RedHat IS linux, and they only really know how to use GNOME, They don't even know what I mean when I say "/dev/hda"
"Sometimes, I think Trent just needs a cup of hot chocolate and a blankie." -Tori Amos on Nine Inch Nails
On a serious note, I admit that Gentoo is the most well maintained distribution out there, and has the best free support when you consider the forums. However, I find a lot of Gentoo zealots feel like they're more in control of their system because of Gentoo. Control is a function of knowledge, not end user tools.
... but I'm sure in the not so distant future something even cooler, from some other quadrant, will come along and surpass it.
... others in the list, particularly those with strong partisan feelings toward another distribution, would probably argue the former. For me, personally, it is irrelevant, and while I do not go around telling everyone they should run Gentoo (a Knoppix Live CD is a far better thing to give a newbie than a Gentoo Live CD, for obvious reasons ... indeed, it is often a better rescue CD for Gentoo systems than a Gentoo LiveCD is), I am certainly not one to apologize for recommending it when I think it will solve someone's problems.
One of Gentoo's real strenths is that it provides the tools that take the tedium out of dependency resolution and compilation (a form of *BSD 'ports' on steroids), without obfuscating the underlying *NIX configurations and filesystem organization. This allows relative newcomers to learn how to setup a GNU/Linux system step by step, understand its organization and how it all fits together, without getting lost in the quagmire of learning the intricacies of autoconf, make, gcc, python or perl scripting.
People who are in to such things tend to become quite ecstatic when they discover such a platform, and such an implimentation. The rest of us, who like to just get work done with a minimum of fuss, may or may not find it appealing. I personally find it to be the best distro I've used by far (and I've been using Linux since the days before distros of any kind even existed...before X even ran on it)
People that use Gentoo and know Linux are cool. They don't run around the internet telling everyone about Gentoo, either. There is another type of Gentoo user...I'm honestly very sick of gentoo zealots throwing plugs in completely unrelated topics.
Well, as with any project, there are those few who are rabidly zealous and seem to have an overdeveloped evangelical streak. Debian, Mandrake, and others have had their fair share of overzealous enthusiasts as well (as does Mac OS X and, I fear, Windows...though one never knows how many of the latter aren't simply bought and paid for, at sub-industry wages and without medical benefits, no doubt).
I am glad, however, that they are evangelizing a Linux distro rather than a real-world religious cult a la $cientology or Mormonism. That having been said, it is natural for people who discover something new that really, really rocks in their mind to want to tell others, particularly if they think it might help someone who is having trouble.
An example where I was guilty of this was with 'transcode', a swiss-army knife tool for converting between various audio and video formats, backing up DVDs, and even authoring one's own DVDs from home video footage. It is a bear to compile, having done so myself under Mandrake, Debian, and others. Someone was having an inordinant amount of trouble getting the thing to work under Mandrake (the binaries didn't work properly, and the source dependencies are, well, hellacious to put it mildly). Having been down that road myself under both Debian and Mandrake, and having found it incredibly easy to install under Gentoo, I suggested that the user might want to try out Gentoo as an alternative. He did, got the thing installed with no trouble, and was greatful.
The question is, was that an off-topic bit of gentoo zealotry, or an ontopic suggestion to someone having trouble getting a notoriously difficult-to-install package running? The person I replied to would argue the latter
No distro can claim the fact that it has indirectly made thousands of users cringe
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
MORON. Oh wait, I get it, I should pirate it. I think I will... just to spite those API clenching butt-tyrants.
Fuck Beta. Fuck Dice
n/t
Fuck Beta. Fuck Dice
each distro would have to write their own.
SuSE and RedHat do a good job with _online_ documentation of things they added, and writing some for things that don't have it but should (project maintainers' fault).
The closest thing to such a book would be written by the LSB or UnitedLinux people, and right now all they have are requirements documents. It'll take awhile for it to solidify so that good Handbook-type-stuff could be written about it.
There is always the Linux Kernel Development (check O'Reilly). It'll tell you more than you'd ever want to know about Linux.
Fuck Beta. Fuck Dice
If you try to contact the author and get no replies then please contact TLDP through one f the discuss lists. It is important to find out what has to be updated and TLDP needs your help. All it takes is an email.
What the hell is that anyway?
Fuck Beta. Fuck Dice
Every time I look at the LDP the docs I need are old, unkept, and useless. Gee, that's freaking useful. How about someone updating those? No? Well then, what's the point. Giving a shit that the LDP is 10 is like still grieving that the Confederacy lost the American Civil War.
"Once upon a time, there was a general consensus that Unix in general, and Linux in particular, lacked good documentation."
That's still the case for a lot of it. Just rummage through the LDP sometime. Plenty of that stuff is obsolete and hasn't been updated for a long time.
No one cares.
Fuck Beta. Fuck Dice
Ten years later, it is no exaggeration to say this issue has been dealt with thoroughly.
What planet do you live on? The general state of documentation for Linux and OSS applications in general is just awful. A number of GNU apps have good-to-excellent documentation, and Perl springs immediately to mind, but on the whole, I'd say that the general state of open source docs is not appreciably better than it was five years ago, and only marginally better than what it was ten years ago.
As for the Linux Documentation Project, the last time I checked, most of its HOWTO's were woefully out of date.
OTOH, perhaps this is a sign of open source finally reaching parity with the closed source world. Crowing about the maturity of open source documentation is exactly like Microsoft talking about the improved security of its products.
Proud member of the Weirdo-American community.
Documents do get outdated. I wanted to install a nis server the other day, so I read the corresponding howto. I found it quite out of date. Half of the things referred in the howto are now automatically done in any decent distribution. Plus a large part of the document was referring to things that are relevant only if you support legacy systems. Finally I got little insight on how to configure what the distribution had left for me. And I never managed to have an MD5 password file shadowed over nis. I am quite sure that there are (more modern) alternatives to nis, but they weren't referred anywhere there.
Some other howtos I read also looked more like 'historic' documents rather than up to date, regularly updated documents. I don't think that LDP was meant to be that way. I hope I was just unlucky with the documents I picked/needed to read.
It's one thing to have good docs, but it's a much better thing to not even need docs. Users are fickle and lazy, and a lot of them will just quit if they can't figure out how to do something while they are doing it. Linux should try and avoid the need for a massive series of in-depth how-tos, and strive for good usability for common folk right out of the box (or off the CD).
A Multiplayer Strategy Game for Mac OS X, Windows, and Linux
Or, what I could be doing is hardware and distro indepentend. In any case, at the time, it was a P4/1Ghz, intel mobo, intel network card, intel graphics. Very standard system, running "candy ass" Redhat 8.0.
Please help metamoderate.
"...a huge collection of focused, solution-oriented documents."
That's a nice long way of saying "lots of HOWTOs".
This is the saddest thing I have read all day. Linux Documentation turns 10? Should be more like "Linux Documentation" written by 10 year olds. Yep you were right all along!" Honestly, Linux documentation is universally horrible and pretty much useless. Even FreeBSD is better documented.
Hey folks, don't bother. This exact post has shown up on other stories, as far back as months ago from what I'm aware, and probably earlier.
Either he's permanently glued to his chair for the last 4 months (and linux uptime would make this possible), or he's just trolling.
Or, he's a ms employee...google OS/2 wars to find out more about ms employees attacking competitors by posting fud to boards anonymously.
Well well well, Sir Haxalot/Jaxalot/Whacksalot is back!!
but the sad truth of the matter is that most HOW-TOs are pathetic, at least compared with the docs from many commercial products or some of the "bigger" open source projects (Apache, PHP, CUPS, etc.). I typically find it more useful to Google Usenet or list archives or threaded discussion lists. Unfortunately, most of the contributors are not technical writers, and it shows.
:)
But, is that such a bad thing? Part of the community aspect of open source software includes the community of knowledge. Sharing at all levels. I try to do it whenever I can be helpful. It's good for your karma.
(Yeah, yeah. You're going to tell me that I should be writing some of these HOW-TOs instead of bitching about them, and you're right. Maybe some day I'll get the chicken pox or something and sit down to do it
There exists no way of exchanging information without making judgments. --Bene Gesserit Axiom
TLDP is a great thing, but there are definitely some weak areas -- specifically, HOWTO's that cover rapidly changing technologies. Topics like wireless, ACPI, X11 fonts, etc. become out of date quickly enough to make the HOWTO's nearly useless. Too often I end up having to Google newsgroups and random sites for hours or even dig through code to find the answers I need. There needs to be a reliable but very easy means of developer-contributed documentation in these cases.
Ten years later, it is no exaggeration to say this issue has been dealt with thoroughly.
No it hasn't. Linux documentation still sucks. Most of the stuff on LDP is outdated or irrelevant, and there's no cohesive guide to dealing with a system because any linux installation is made up of a ton of little parts from different projects that keep changing.
For the difficult tasks (ex: showing how LVM works and how to implement it across a RAID array) you'll just have to slog through the hard parts from concepts through implementation to understand why you want to do it in the first place and what your specfic goals are. With dificult tasks, there usually isn't a one-size-fits-all result everyone wants so you need to know the details or it just won't work well.
For trivial tasks, there typically is one good way to do it, and there will always be novices. For them, 'Mr. Video' is the way to go.
This is one thing I'd *love* to do for either OpenOffice or Mozilla/Firebird. Not to show all possible uses of those programs -- they can be complex at the edges -- but to show the basics quickly, plus a few important specifics ('tabbed browsing is valuable...let's see how'). Some of the existing tutorials for OpenOffice are quite good and within minutes can show a novice how to use the program. What is needed are more of the 'move the mouse this way and press this button to turn the text into a BOLD font'; teach the very basic basics to a stone cold novice.
A firewall can not protect you from yourself. Turn off what you do not need. Do not use the firewall to do your work.
"It's unfortunate that the average user thinks he needs an interface that's SO intuitive that no reading is necessary."
Simple, as people like Donald Norman and Jeff Raskin have pointed out. The human-machine interface can be much better than it is presently. Second, computer manufacturers have been trying to sell people on the idea that computers are appliances. Somewere there's a middle ground.
tha while there is a tremendous amount of information in the Documention Project's output, the critics who say much of it is obsolete seem to be correct.
It may not be exactly obsolete since in many cases, you can still do what the documentation says.
However, as an example, when I went to set up my DSL line to work in Linux, I read through the DSL howto and the network howtos, etc. What I failed to realize is that Red Hat already had SCRIPTS set up in 7.3 to handle all that. I ended up doing manually what Red Hat had already automated.
Of course it's my fault for not reviewing the Red Hat docs first. And even a magazine that came out about two years ago with an article on DSL was out of date. But you'd think someone could review some of these critical documents and update them at least a little. Or a process could be put in place when users and reviewers could add addendum to them in the form of comments or whatever that could redirect new users to more current information.
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
Did any of the moderators actually look at this MSDN "documentation"? Yes, it is nicely presented and pleasing to the eye, but unfortunately also inaccurate and full of errors! Personnally, I'd rather have an ugly, but correct documentation than MSFT's rolls of TP!